She got up and put on the kettle. I sat down on a wobbly chair; it was too small for me.

‘Fancy you running a shop!’ I said.

‘Why shouldn’t I?’ she snapped.

‘Nothing. I mean, well …’

‘It’s my own place, I’m doing something for myself, at last.’

‘What about, you know, the sociology and everything?’

‘Read the government figures?’

I nodded.

‘Well, then.’

She turned away. I looked at her back. She was wearing baggy red trousers. With the orange hair it gave her an unlikely, clownish air. I thought: this woman is the mother of my son.

I realized I hadn’t read a newspaper for a week. It was as if I had been locked away in an institution, or sent on some obscure holiday. I felt odd, sitting there. My mind was still, dreamily, with my earlier possibilities, back in Windermere and Spalding. I couldn’t catch up with myself and what was happening. My bones felt numb, on the hard wicker chair. She was familiar enough with me to be abrupt, and yet it wasn’t quite personal enough to be directed at me, Desmond. I craved one of her cigarettes; she owed me about a hundred, but it seemed tactless to remind her.

‘You want it ordinary, I suppose?’ she asked.

‘Ordinary?’

‘I’ve got camomile and ginseng and—’

‘Aaargh!’ I clutched my throat.

She opened a caddy. ‘Still teaching people to drive?’

‘No. I work for a coach company now.’

There was a silence. We seemed like two strangers, but more wary. Two unknowns, but without that small store of goodwill you keep for somebody you’ve just met. I looked at her trousers and tried to remember her stout thighs wrapped around me, but it was as if it had never happened. This was depressing. Yet an eleven-year-old boy sat in a classroom, this very morning, just a mile away. The room was so stuffy; its objects seemed to clamour at me from the walls. I felt dizzy. I scratched my nose; it felt rubbery, as if it belonged to someone else.

‘I don’t suppose you’ve come to see me.’

‘Why not?’ I yelped.

‘You’ve had sleepless nights, thinking about me.’

I paused.

‘At least you’ve always been honest, unlike some people I know.’ She sighed. The kettle steamed, and clicked off. ‘You were too masculine to be devious.’

‘Thanks,’ I said doubtfully.

She brought a cup of tea to the table. I wished she had made one for herself.

She said: ‘You can’t see him.’

‘I didn’t—’

‘You’ve come to see Edward.’

‘Not really. I just—’

‘You can’t, Desmond.’

I stood up, and beckoned her to the window. She moved nearer, reluctantly. I pointed through the glass.

‘See that?’

I pointed to the rear view of my coach. It looked large and dirty; it filled the street.