He’d volunteered to take her on a field trip to complement her home studies. He was really sorry he had. The tutor could have done it. He was paying her enough. Jesus help me.

‘Yeah, it’s lovely,’ he mumbled.

‘Like heaven, Davey.’

‘Do you believe in heaven?’ he said.

‘No, but maybe there’s somewhere else like heaven except without all the crazy God stuff.’

‘Like where?’

‘I dunno, maybe another world like this one, and the only difference is the people in that world know we exist and they remember us. Mostly they just go about their new lives, but every now and then they come to a place like this and it’s a portal to see the people they love, just for a minute or two, just to check in. Do you think that’s possible, Davey?’

‘Anything’s possible.’

‘And maybe one day when I die I’ll go to the new world my ma lives in, and when we want to visit with the people we love we’ll come to a place like this together and look down.’

He opened his eyes and slowly moved his heavy arm around her shoulder. ‘I think that would be lovely.’

She waved at the four-thousand-foot drop. ‘I love ya, Ma. I miss ya. We wish you were here, don’t we, Davey?’

‘We do.’ He kissed her head and she rested on his shoulder.

‘Everything’s OK, Ma,’ she said. ‘I’m studying really hard, one on one. I’m going to be a doctor before you know it. I’m going to cure cancer like I said I would.’ She was high on possibility. It was a good day.

Juliet spent hours of her day studying. She passed every test with flying colours. Her tutor was really impressed, but Davey was worried that she was disappearing into her schoolwork in the absence of having friends her own age.

He didn’t know what to do about that except support her, if she’d let him. After all nobody studied themselves to death or destruction and, as his mother had previously disclosed, the parental bar set for him was pretty low. Just love her, Davey.

What if it’s not enough, Rabbit?

His sex life suffered irreparably, and not because he was now a full-time parent obsessed with real-world concerns, or touring city to city, state to state – that never stopped him before; instead he found that intimacy with strangers left him feeling unfulfilled, unsatisfied, cold and, worst of all, awkward. Marjorie laughed at his concerns when he moaned about his horrible sex life on Skype. ‘Welcome to middle age, Davey.’