‘Samir.’ Amazing, she hadn’t said his name in years and now it felt like she couldn’t stop. ‘I have.’

‘Yeah, you told me he existed. Not that you loved him.’ For a level-headed kid who’d always been more dinosaurs-and-fossils than dolls-and-clothes, Lennie was weirdly sentimental. Too much Disney at a formative age, probably, all those big-eyed princesses on the weekend afternoons when it was raining and Robin’s will to drag her broken body off the sofa after a week of fourteen-hour days had failed. Despite the example in front of her, Lennie believed in Love with a capital L – The One, the happily-ever-after.

‘I did say that. Or I thought you’d probably … read between the lines.’

Lennie shook her head, not buying it. ‘Grandpa said he broke your heart.’

Christ alive. ‘Well, he kind of did. We made plans – promises – and he broke them.’

‘How? What plans?’

‘You know we went travelling together, him and me? We talked about it all the time then, all the way round Europe and Botswana, Zambia, South Africa.’ Spinning dreams at street cafés by ferry ports on Greek islands; on a flat-bed truck from Lusaka to Victoria Falls. Eight months. ‘We had this whole plan for our lives. We were going to go to London together – UCL like I did, he had a place, too – get our degrees then join the Met together. But then, like Grandpa said, just like that,’ she snapped her fingers, ‘he bailed.’

‘Why?’ The million-dollar question. ‘Grandpa said it was because of his family. Staying close.’

No lies to Lennie. ‘That’s what he told me.’

‘But you didn’t believe it. So what was the real reason?’

‘When it boiled down to it? He just didn’t love me as much as I loved him.’

Lennie frowned. ‘Poor Mum.’

‘Oh, I was all right. After a bit. Takes more than that to crack me.’ She reached across and squeezed Lennie’s nylon-clad thigh. ‘And if it had all worked out between him and me, I wouldn’t have had you, would I? He did me a big favour. Massive. Biggest ever.’

Lennie nodded slowly, not agreeing but absorbing, taking it in.

The traffic was thickening, Friday afternoon. The weekend stretched bleakly ahead: no school, no work, no distraction from the grim reality of their situation.

‘Has Gid rung you this week, Mum?’

‘No.’

‘Have you been in touch with him?’

‘On Monday, before I heard the news about Rin. I texted him.’