None of them thought me capable of speaking like that and I had rather surprised myself. Alison said, “Please don’t be angry. Please don’t think we’re ungrateful. It’s just that we’re in—well, a very nervous state.” She looked near to tears. “Andrew doesn’t mean it,” she said when he’d left the room to fetch their contribution to our expenses. “I wish you could hear what he says about you when you’re not here. He’s always singing your praises.”

This I found hard to believe but I said no more. I used to wonder a lot about Andrew Lane. It was plain that he loved Jason, and loved him as much as Alison did. Once he must have loved Alison. He must have wanted to draw their money out of the bank, leave home, run from hotel to B-and-B to trailer, make arrangements with Louis Robinson, hide up there. But the way of life he had chosen was more than he could cope with. He longed for freedom, and he was unsure that he wanted Jason at any price. Imprisonment was destroying his love for Alison. He simply wasn’t strong enough, steadfast enough, and perhaps he was always tugged by the memory of what they had had before, good jobs, an income, a nice house, friends, neighbors, freedom. But no Jason. Was Jason worth it? I was thinking all this when he came back with a wad of £20 and £10 notes. He dealt out £2,000, put the notes into Silver’s hands and asked him to count them.

“I’ll give you some more when you’ve got our plane tickets.”

This meant, of course, that Silver was going to have to buy the tickets out of his own pocket. Neither Andrew nor Alison showed any surprise that a boy of twenty could find the sort of sums we were talking about. It seemed not to occur to them. I suppose that when they lived in the real world they had both earned so much that they assumed those still out there did also.

The letter from Guy was still on the desk where I had left it. Wondering why I had bothered to keep it once I had read it, I tore it up and dropped the pieces in our wastebin.

Silver, watching me, said, “Are you going to?”

“Am I going to what?”

“Marry him. This guy Guy.”

I could hardly believe it. I stared at him. “Of course I’m not going to marry him. I’m too young to get married.”

“Is that the only reason?”

What I knew wasn’t pleasant. “Have you read my letter?”