‘Didn’t she write a book?’

‘Did she?’ She looked surprised.

‘The female something.’

She paused. ‘Not Greer, nitwit. Lesley. You a friend of hers?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘Yes. Not really.’

She took one of the dental wipes and blew her nose. Then she said to her son: ‘I’m catching your frigging cold.’ She turned back to me. ‘Lucky you caught me. Next month we’re going back to Sydney.’

I nearly said ‘Who’s he?’ but I stopped. There was something wrong with my brain that morning.

She went on: ‘I’ve had enough of this lousy country, no offence, but look at it.’

She stood at the window. It was starting to rain again; the ground-floor flats opposite had been boarded up. Down below there was a Mercedes parked.

‘See that Merc?’ she said. ‘That’s my landlord.’ A man came out of the sex shop and got into the car. ‘Mrs Thatcher’s Britain, it stinks. I want my son to have some sort of a life.’

The boy said: ‘Mercs are wik.’

‘What’s wik?’ I asked.

‘Wicked,’ he said patiently. ‘What car’ve you got?’

I was going to say an Escort but I stopped. ‘A coach.’

‘A coach!’ For the first time he looked his age. He pressed his face against the window. The front half of the coach was jutting out of the council estate car park: big and shiny; two-tone bodywork, green and cream.

‘It’s not exactly mine.’

‘Wik!’

‘Tell me about Lesley,’ I said, sitting down on a chair.

Her son went off to buy another comic. She sat down beside me.

‘Boy, was she screwed-up.’

‘Was she?’ I felt a tweak of relief. Perhaps it hadn’t been all my fault.

‘She used to sit in my room for hours going on about gender bias at college, and how it was a patriarchal syllabus, and how in conversation male dominance to female was 70 to 30.’

I smiled. That sounded familiar.

She grinned. ‘So I told her she was sure making up for the 30.’ She paused. ‘We had some laughs, she was all right when you got her off her hobby-horse. She was just incredibly fierce about men. I think she had some problem there but I never knew what it was.’ She took another dental wipe. ‘Christ knows what it’ll do to her son.’

‘Edward.’

‘That’s it, Edward.’ She spoke the name carelessly; I’d never heard a stranger speak it. Edward filled the waiting room.

‘Edward,’ I repeated. Then I asked: ‘What do you mean? Wasn’t she a good mother?’

She sighed. ‘Who is? It’s the hardest job in the world.’

‘Is it?’

‘You got kids?’

‘Sort of.’ I paused. ‘Wasn’t she bringing him up properly?’

‘Do I bring up Butler properly? Who knows?’

‘But Edward …’ I felt like the anxious father I had never been.

‘I’m just saying, it’s hard on your own.’ She grimaced. ‘But then again it’s hard with someone else.’

‘She didn’t have to be on her own!’ I blurted out.

She looked at me curiously. ‘You a relative or something?’