He gathered the small stems of dried flowers together. Angie with her restless, agitated hands had messed them up and they no longer looked like a neat, shop-assembled gift. Seymour wrapped them again in the tissue paper.

‘That’s a lovely present,’ Angie said distractedly. ‘Did I thank you for it? I’ll be able to use it in dried-flower arrangements when I get my florist shop. My goodness, all this fuss about a little attack of flu and pleurisy, you’re just as bad as my parents…I’ve forgotten what this dry stuff’s called—it’s not fennel, is it? I’m well enough to get up and walk right out of…Bracken, that’s not it, either…Oh, I wish I would remember the names of things!’

‘It’s called honesty,’ Seymour said and suddenly felt very tired, too tired to bother about the bouquet. He dumped it next to her, not caring that the fragile moons scattered fragments of themselves into the dusty grass. ‘That’s what it’s called—honesty. Geeze, Angie, you go rattling on about bronchitis and flu, but we both know what…The flat, that’s all over and done with, there’s nothing left there now. You can’t go back there.’

‘There are other places! I’ve got friends…’

‘They all want you to go to that Lakeview place, you know they do. It’s some kind of home where they help you get off…drugs, isn’t it? You promised them you’d go there. Your dad’s coming in to pick you up.’

‘I won’t be here when he does! They can’t make me go if I don’t want to! It’ll just be like all those other times I tried—a waste…it never ever works out…’

‘Maybe you never give it a chance to.’

‘Don’t you dare start preaching at me! I’ve got enough to worry about. Got to find somewhere else to…Samantha reckons it shows now. They don’t like renting flats to people with kids, neighbours complaining…poor little baby…poor little thing. Oh, God, what a mess! I wish now I’d just…just…’

Seymour suddenly thought of the baby he’d seen all those years ago, remembered clear eyes gazing peacefully into his face. He felt sick with distress.

‘Any kid of yours is going to have a great time, isn’t it?’ he said stiffly, getting to his feet. ‘A real lovely time it’s going to have! You falling asleep every time you come down with…with flu, and it can just bawl its head off. You probably won’t even hear, Angie. Falling out of its cot and you won’t hear that, either! You reckon you like little kids—all those times we went out and you saw a pram, you’d stop and have a look and go all clucky. Talk about a big act!’