“Then we start lessons, not great fun for him, since he’s all alone with no companions. As to the one who’s not teaching, say it’s me, I look out of the window. I know more about the structure of plane trees than anyone now living, I’ve charted the life cycle of their leaves from day to day, I could write a thesis on it. When I’ve done my leaf study, sometimes I just lie down and sleep. We both sleep a lot, it ought to be doing us good but it doesn’t seem to. I’d sneak out to the shops before you so kindly took that job away from me.” His resentful tone made it sound far from kind. “Now I don’t have to I use the time for reading, only we’ve read all Robinson’s books, none of which in any case would have been my choice.”

“We’re lucky to have any books,” Alison said. “We’re lucky to have the video.”

“Oh, lucky. We’re not lucky, my dear, we’re bloody wretched.” He looked back at Silver. “When we’ve had lunch, the other one of us gets on with the lessons. We can’t remember the things we should without textbooks, so very likely we’re giving him the wrong information. Never mind. We’re lucky. Afternoons always drag, don’t you think? Well, ours drag twice as slowly as most people’s. We have tea with biscuits, cake, anything. There are no scales here, thank God, but I can tell I’m putting on weight fast. I’ve put on a stone, I reckon, since we’ve been here. Alison’s always been one of those scraggy women. She could live on cream and chips and still stay thin.

“Things are a bit grim after tea because there’s nothing left to do, nothing. Sometimes I just walk around the flat, into every room, in and out again, marching along, back to where I started from and then do it all over again. It drives Alison crazy.”

I could tell from her expression that it did. She closed her eyes, shook her head a little.

“Or I recite the multiplication table, which must be good for Jason if for no one else. He usually enlivens things at this time by asking why he can’t go out, he wants to go out, why can’t he see his friends, why can’t he go in the park? He can see the trees of a park from the kitchen window. We explain as best we can for the fiftieth or maybe the hundredth time. Then he says that if ‘the policemen,’ I quote, want us to go back home it’s wrong, it’s breaking the law, not to go. I don’t know who told him there was such a thing as law, I’m sure I didn’t.