He raged silently at his father, seeing him as a useless wastrel, a no-hoper. It wasn’t too much to ask, a permanent home somewhere, a job like everyone else’s father. Only…a memory edged into his mind, of the little fold-down table in the caravan and a newspaper spread out at the employment ads, some of them ringed with pencil. Seymour, almost asleep in the top bunk, had watched the pencil suddenly roll away from tired fingers and drop to the floor. He had watched his father’s hands go up to his temples, and the worry lines across his forehead deepen into something like despair.

There was no way they’d ever all live together in a little cuckoo-clock house in a garden suburb like—well, Merken, where Angie had grown up. Only, perhaps it didn’t matter all that much, anyhow. There hadn’t been much evidence of happiness in Angie’s former house. She hadn’t liked it, she’d moved on. Perhaps it was as he’d suspected all along, no place was ever going to be any good, and you just had to come to terms with it.

Maybe he’d been wrong about his mother hankering after curtain fabric and cushions. She certainly wasn’t now—she was hurrying him briskly towards the cafeteria, pleased with herself because she’d found some needlework stuff at half-price on a display counter. All those little mats she made, he thought, sitting down to lunch. Why does she bother? She’s got no house full of tables and shelves to put mats on, no place of her own…But she chatted, with what seemed like enthusiasm, of the new job and the possibility of it being permanent if things worked out as she thought they might.

‘We could even get some of our stuff out of storage,’ she said. ‘Take it along with us when we move, just in case. There’s my little chintz chair…Don’t put your elbows on the table, Seymour, you know better than that.’

‘What if…’ Seymour began, intending to say, ‘What if Dad gets that maintenance job at the golf links he was talking about, aren’t you going to give him another chance? Aren’t we all going to be living back together again?’

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full,’ said his mother. ‘Goodness, I hope you haven’t been doing that at Thelma’s. She’ll think I haven’t brought you up properly. I don’t want you getting into sloppy habits, dear. It was a mistake letting you go to your father even for that short time. I don’t know, every time I go against my better judgment and let you visit—not that he deserves it—what was it you wanted to say?’

‘Nothing.’