There was a kind of violence to that touch, delicate as it was. It let in shadows.

‘She had to hold my hand the first time we went on the Tube,’ says Titch. She doesn’t quite mean to say it.

‘She is so sweet,’ Archie says.

‘Oh yes,’ says Titch, grateful for the word. ‘Such a sweet girl.’

Graeme walks around the forecourt with Rose. The cars gleam in the sun. They are not good cars. They are little bangers for new drivers.

Rose can’t drive yet, but she wants to.

They test drive a Peugeot 107. It’s twelve years old, and red. Rose sits in the passenger seat. They circle a few blocks, changing stations on the radio. Outside, the town is bright. Even the grey estates look sharp and clean.

Back at the dealer’s, they stand by the car. The sun is warm on Graeme’s neck.

‘Why don’t you wait?’ he says.

Her shoulders are bare. She’s wearing a halterneck. Her skin is pale and freckled.

‘Titch says I should enjoy the money.’

‘Yes, but why do you need to drive?’

‘I’m going to live in the country,’ she says.

Graeme feels a pull of sadness. She is an adult, almost, but the way she says ‘the country’ is the same as how she said it when she first came, trailing the strange myths of her disordered childhood.

‘You know you can stay with me as long as you want,’ says Graeme.

She can. He wants her to. But it suddenly seems entirely inadequate that a home is something he can just offer on a whim, half meant.

‘We’re going to do it soon,’ she says.

‘We?’ He frowns. ‘You know Aaron has to stay until he’s sixteen.’

She seems surprised. ‘Why?’

‘He’s in care,’ Graeme says. ‘I have to look after him.’ He’s flustered. He’s not saying things in the right way.

‘It’s my job,’ he says. He sees her thin neck bowed. He wants to touch her, hug her, but he can’t bring himself to do it.

They buy the car.

She gets lessons, but Graeme takes her out for practice too. He’s impressed. She frowns as she drives, a tight, intense frown of concentration. He’s never seen her focus on anything so much before. She puts cushions in the back seat. Sometimes she and Aaron sit in it with the doors shut.

They sit there for hours.

Caz sees the frown on Graeme’s face settle. He talks less. At dinner, he is distracted.

At night, in bed, Caz asks what’s wrong.

‘She looks like her mother,’ he says.

In the dark, Graeme’s mind circles back. He’s remembered these things before, vaguely, as something long finished, but now they are vivid again, bright and young as Rose. She is like her mother. She wasn’t, but now she is. In the photos and the adverts she is, and now he can’t stop seeing it.

He met Ash when he was twenty. She was sixteen. She was friends with Alice, whose brother Frank sold weed.