I said, “You didn’t finish your maths. Is Mrs. O’Donnell going to get in a snot about that?”

For a second Holly looked like she had forgotten who Mrs. O’Donnell was. “Oh. I don’t care. She’s stupid.”

“I bet she is. There’s no reason you should have to listen to her being stupid about this, on top of everything else. Where’s your notebook?”

She dug it out, in slow motion, and handed it over. I flipped to the first blank page and wrote, Dear Mrs. O’Donnell, please excuse Holly for not finishing her maths homework. She hasn’t been well this weekend. If this is a problem, feel free to give me a call. Many thanks. Frank Mackey. On the opposite page I saw Holly’s round, painstaking handwriting: If Desmond has 342 pieces of fruit . . .

“There,” I said, passing the notebook back to her. “If she gives you any hassle, you give her my phone number and tell her to back off. OK?”

“Yeah. Thanks, Daddy.”

I said, “Your mother’s going to need to know about this. Let me do the explaining there.”

Holly nodded. She put the notebook away, but she stayed put, clicking her seat belt open and shut. I said, “What’s bugging you, chickadee?”

“You and Nana were mean to each other.”

“Yeah. We were.”

“How come?”

“We shouldn’t have been. Every now and then, though, we just get on each other’s nerves. Nobody in the world can make you crazy like your family can.”

Holly stuffed Clara into her bag and gazed down at her, stroking the threadbare nose with one finger. “If I did something bad,” she said. “Would you tell lies to the police to keep me from getting in trouble?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I would. I would lie to the police and the Pope and the president of the world till I was blue in the face, if that was what you needed. It would be the wrong thing to do, but I’d do it just the same.”

Holly startled the hell out of me by leaning forward between the seats, wrapping her arms around my neck and pressing her cheek against mine. I hugged her tight enough that I could feel her heartbeat against my chest, quick and light as a little wild animal’s. There were a million things I needed to say to her, every one of them crucial, but none of them would come out of my mouth.

Finally Holly sighed, an enormous shaky sigh, and disentangled herself. She climbed out of the car and hoisted her schoolbag onto her back. “If I have to talk to that Stephen guy,” she said. “Could it be not on Wednesday? Because I want to go play at Emily’s.”

“That’s absolutely fine, sweetie. Whatever day suits you. Go on ahead, now. I’ll be in to you in a bit; I’ve just got to make a phone call.”