Holly slid the table carefully back into the dollhouse dining room, adjusted it with a fingertip. I said, “I try to tell you the truth, even when it hurts a little bit. You know that. You need to do the same for me. Is that fair?”

Holly said to the dollhouse, in a small muffled voice, “Sorry, Daddy.”

I said, “I know you are, love. It’s going to be OK. Just remember this, next time you’re thinking about keeping a secret from me, all right?”

Nod. “There you go,” I said. “Now you can tell me how you got on with our family. Did your nana make you trifle for your tea?”

A shaky little sigh of relief. “Yeah. And she says I’ve got lovely hair.”

Holy shit: a compliment. I’d been all geared up to contradict criticisms of everything from Holly’s accent through her attitude through the color of her socks, but apparently my ma was getting soft in her old age. “Which you do. What are your cousins like?”

Holly shrugged and pulled a tiny grand piano out of the dollhouse living room. “Nice.”

“What kind of nice?”

“Darren and Louise don’t talk to me that much because they’re too big, but me and Donna do imitations of our teachers. One time we laughed till Nana told us to shhh or the police would come get us.”

Which sounded a little more like the Ma I knew and avoided. “How about your aunt Carmel and uncle Shay?”

“They’re OK. Aunt Carmel’s sort of boring, but when Uncle Shay’s home he helps me with my maths homework, because I told him Mrs. O’Donnell yells if you get stuff wrong.”

And here I had been delighted that she was finally getting a handle on division. “That’s nice of him,” I said.

“Why don’t you go see them?”

“That’s a long story, chicken. Too long for one morning.”

“Can I still go even if you don’t?”

I said, “We’ll see.” It all sounded perfectly idyllic, but Holly still wasn’t looking at me. Something was bugging her, apart from the obvious. If she had seen my da in his preferred state of mind, there was going to be holy war and possibly a brand-new custody hearing. I asked, “So what’s on your mind? Did one of them annoy you?”

Holly ran a fingernail up and down the piano keyboard. After a moment she said, “Nana and Granddad don’t have a car.”

This wasn’t what I’d been expecting. “Nope.”

“Why?”

“They don’t need one.”

Blank look. It struck me that Holly had never before in her life met anyone who didn’t have a car, whether they needed one or not. “How do they get places?”