‘You must be hurting.’ He shook his head. She remembered that about him, the way he’d never been ashamed to be frank about emotional stuff, never worried it made him look weak to feel.

‘It’s like I’m on the moon,’ she said.

Another nod. ‘How long you been back? I heard you were coming.’

‘Less than a week. Sunday. Feels like months, with all this.’

‘Yeah. It must do. You don’t come back a lot, though, do you? Didn’t. When did I even see you last?’

‘Rin’s wedding.’

‘Really? Bloody hell. How’s your little girl? She can’t be that little any more.’

‘Thirteen. She’s great. She’s at Savvy’s, actually, started on Monday.’

‘Savvy’s?’ He looked surprised.

‘Moving mid-year – we missed the test for the grammar,’ she said with another stab of guilt. As she’d parked the car, she’d had a response from Lennie at last. Two words: I’m okay.

‘But Savvy’s turns out some decent people, doesn’t it?’ she said. ‘When did all this happen?’ She gestured round her at the enormous yard. Behind them, a field of dead cars stretched as far as the eye could see, supervised by the giant claws that would lift them to the compactors. As she’d come round the side of the offices, she’d seen skip after skip of industrial cast-offs, sheared metal sharp as razor wire. They were standing in a clearing between giant heaps of old radiators and iron spools, lengths of copper pipe and odd lozenge-shaped little tanks.

‘Catalytic converters,’ he said, following her gaze. ‘Oh, we’ve built it up gradually over the years, expanded next door. We make a good team, me and Dad.’

‘He’s still working?’

‘Oh, yeah. Mum keeps on at him but he’ll never retire. We strike a balance – he does as much as he wants, consultant role, you know.’ He smiled. ‘Mum wants to go on a cruise but I’m trying to convince her mates to take her instead – girls’ trip. I think it’d be the death of him, all that sitting around. Either that or he’d be buying up their old liners, making salvage deals left and right. Can’t let him loose round the Med – not bloody safe.’