Briony was nonplussed for a moment. ‘Would you like to? Only you haven’t really seen him, have you? He’s beautiful, Tommy ...’

‘I know that, Bri, you tell me often enough.’

‘Sally’s taking him to the park, and while he runs his dog we chat. If Isabel knew there’d would be murders, but what she don’t know can’t hurt her. Sometimes I feel like just taking him, you know? He’s ten now, he’s growing up, and he doesn’t even know I exist. It hurts, Tommy.’

He took her small hand in his and kissed it.

‘We go through this every time. He don’t know you, Bri, he’s happy with them. Well, with Isabel anyway. He’ll have everything we never had, he’ll have the right friends, go to the right schools. Fuck me, Bri, he’s got it made! I wish my old mum had given me to someone like that.’

‘But I could give him all that now.’

Her voice was small, distressed.

‘Oh, Bri, don’t go queer on me again. You can offer him money, but you’ll always be Briony Cavanagh. You’re not even married. He’d just be an illegitimate kid. This way he’s someone, someone important. He’ll go to one of them university places, then he’ll inherit all that old goat’s money. Don’t balls it up for him, Bri, because he won’t thank you for it. Watch him from a distance, watch over him like that. When he’s a man, then tell him the truth. Who knows? Maybe he’ll find out himself. But for now, don’t rock his boat, love, you don’t know what the upshot might be.’

Briony’s radiant face had paled. ‘Tommy Lane, the voice of reason.’ The words were bitter.

‘Yeah, well. I’m only trying to do what’s best for that boy. Think with your head, Bri, not your heart. Now then, let’s get ourselves suited and booted and off out! I’ll treat you to a nice Jewish breakfast in Brick Lane before we go to Regents Park, how’s that? I ain’t had no lox or bagels for ages. What do you say?’

‘Who you got to see at Brick Lane?’

Tommy laughed.

‘You always outthink me, don’t you? I have to see Solly Goldstern. He owes me a whacking great sum of money and today I collect.’

‘All right then, Tommy. I’ll get Cissy to run the bath.’

As she busied herself getting ready, she daydreamed of having her son back home with her. Of her dressed in her best walking him to school. Dreams were free, and no one could stop you having them.

That was why, for Briony, they always had the edge over real life.