Jake is checking the little window at the far end to see if it will open. It makes a cracking sound as it unsticks. She watches him as he stands back, his eyes busily travelling over the room, and she knows he’s making silent designs – Matthew’s bed there under the window, a chest of drawers here by the door, some posters on the walls, balsawood aeroplanes dangling from the ceiling, a shelf for Lego master-builds skirting the wall. She knows that he is reconstructing the place in his mind, a room for his son that will be cosy and welcoming – safe – and there’s something so guileless about him, the obvious need he has to shelter and protect his child, that she feels her heart constrict with love for this man, for the depths of warmth and need within him.

‘There’s no drier, I’m afraid,’ Mark says, drawing their attention back to him, ‘but you can use the washing line in the garden.’

He opens the French windows, and a waft of warm air comes in, carrying the scent of lavender and grass. They follow him outside, taking the opportunity to glance at each other while his back is turned in a bid to gauge their reactions to the place. Jake raises his eyebrows, the hint of a smile at the corners of his mouth, and Leah meets it with her own look of approval. She knows they share the same thought: that this is more than they had hoped for. It’s true that the flat is somewhat starved of light, and it has an empty feel of neglect from having been unlived in for some years. But it’s spacious and quiet, and the neighbourhood is far better than anything they’d hoped for. Compared with the long list of cramped and dingy flats they’ve traipsed through over the last few weeks, it seems generous and opulent in comparison.

‘So this here is yours,’ Mark tells them, indicating the patio that has been carved into a space tucked between the garden wall and the steps that lead down from the big house. ‘It doesn’t get that much sunlight, to be honest, but it’s a place to sit in the evenings, I guess.’

‘Would it be all right if we put a barbecue here?’ Jake asks.

Mark shrugs and says: ‘Knock yourselves out.’

He’s already turned and stepped up on to the grass, so Jake leans in and whispers to Leah: ‘He’s really selling this place, huh?’

She smiles and digs him in the ribs, but he’s touched on something that she’s been feeling too: the sense that Mark is not altogether happy with the situation. He’s already a few yards away into the garden, which is overgrown and nettled, a tangle of briars strangling whatever shrubs are there.