I saw them run off, Michael said.

When?

Now. Only just now.

Oh. Oh well, they’ll come back soon enough.

Do you think we should look for them?

No. I’m sure they’ll be back before you leave.

The conversation had died. She didn’t know what to speak of any more. They walked to the front of the house. Perhaps the boys were playing in his car again, but they weren’t. They went inside and Michael fetched down his case, and still the boys were nowhere to be seen. She must find them to say goodbye.

It’s all right, you can say goodbye for me.

She called their names, up the stairs. Surely they could not be indoors, upstairs on a day like this?

Really, it’s fine, there’s no need to find them for me. Only I must get going. It’s a long drive.

They said goodbye, just the two of them, with a look but no kiss. And he started the car, and waited a moment. She thought that the sound of the engine might have drawn the boys, but she stood alone and watched as he drove away.

She found them in the greenhouse.

Had there been an earthquake? It looked as if there had been an earthquake.

Terracotta rubble, soil, leaves beneath their feet as if a miniature terracotta city had been destroyed. The two boys giants in the ruins.

Jonny saw her first and stood transfixed, terrified, but Richard held a hoe in his two hands and went on smashing things. The pots in which tomatoes grew, the plants torn out and thrown down and the thick scent of their crushed leaves in the air, ripening fruits squashed green and red underfoot. Other pots swept down from the shelves, ten-inch pots, eight-inch pots, four-inch pots, the towers of tiny pots in which she grew seedlings, thrown down and smashed, one after another, among the sieves and seed trays. She couldn’t speak. At last Richard saw her and held still, but shaking, the tool he held trembling in the air, as if arrested but not halted in his movement, hair blond, eyes blue, rooted in the chaos like a sturdy wild Vandal warrior. Everything about them seemed to hold utterly still as she took a step forward onto the debris. She felt shards crack further beneath her feet. Heard them break. As if there was a whole ruined city, a civilisation, the work of ages beneath her feet.

How could they do this?

Another step, and she saw Richard’s eyes dart to the glass above their heads. Would he have raised the hoe and smashed that too? With one final blow? The sky glittering down on them, glass breaking, falling, cutting boys’ skin? Glass in their eyes. No, tears. Tears in all of their eyes.

He’s gone, she said. Now come in and have tea.

They left the ruins without a word.

They need a father figure, her friends had said.

But they had their figure.