Next morning after she’d gone to work, he collected the key from under the flowerpot and crept into Angie’s flat, thankful that its door couldn’t be seen from the main house. He was afraid of that formidable landlady, and although he had a speech prepared—‘Angie’s been in hospital for a few days. With flu. But she’s coming home soon, so I’ve just dropped in to clean out the fridge for her.’—he was sure he’d muff it if she just happened to be around and demanded to know what he was doing there. He wasn’t planning to tackle the fridge only—he meant to clean up the whole place as a welcome-home surprise. He remembered the mess on his last visit and had come prepared for hours of hard labour, but when he shut the door behind him and turned around, he found that someone had already been in and done it. The bed was neatly made and all the things on the sink had been washed and set to drain. The linoleum under his feet shone, its pattern now visible, and there was a tang of pine-scented cleaner in the air.

Seymour’s first reaction was disappointment. He’d spent all the previous evening planning how he was going to spring-clean the flat and have it glowing to welcome Angie home. A couple of days, Lynne had said. Well, in that couple of days someone, the landlady he supposed, had got there before him. Perhaps Mrs Easterbrook had phoned and told her about Angie being in hospital and she’d had a twinge of conscience for being so heavy about the rent. Angie wouldn’t be at all pleased about her messing around in here. However, there was one small job he could do. He went importantly to the fridge with a cloth he’d brought with him, soaked in vanilla essence. Thelma did that whenever she cleaned her fridge, to make it smell fresh.

But someone had already defrosted and scrubbed out Angie’s fridge, and forgotten to switch it back on. Seymour attended to that and closed its door, so it would be ready for storing food. Somehow he was going to have to find the courage to go all the way down the alley to the shopping centre, risk facing that gang of local kids, and buy a stock of food. Healthy, nourishing food, like oatmeal porridge and fruit and wholemeal bread, using his race money. It was the last thing he could do for Angie before he left with his mother tomorrow afternoon.