And we had other unending rhythms in that town: my mother lighting a fresh cigarette with a dying one, the race-caller’s mounting panic coming over the car radio, the burr of static underneath. There were Saturday nights at the pub drinking vodka and raspberry until it came up in a pink rush against a wall, and boys who would holler their encouragement and kiss me anyway, as though this was a tender favour.

One Sunday, I put an ad on a website. I left it there a week. There was only one reply.

So this was who went to live in the hills, I thought.

How old was he? Forty-ish, I guessed, though he was thin enough and handsome enough to make his age seem like an advantage. His shirt was unironed. His lips might have been too broad, forming a rubbery oval like a clown’s mouth, but he hid them with a beard. His bald spot wasn’t alarming; it wouldn’t have been larger than a dollar coin.

He gestured towards the child, who was sitting on a Turkish rug in a room lined with bookcases. White sunlight filtered in through glass doors that led to the garden.

‘She’s a good kid,’ he said. ‘I can’t imagine she’ll give you much trouble.’

I was relieved to hear him use a pronoun. The baby was dressed in sombre grey and white, and her short black hair provided me with no clues whatsoever. Her name, Lee, hadn’t helped.

She wasn’t so much playing as grabbing at the elegant objects that surrounded her.

‘She keeps putting things in her mouth,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to watch that.’

I told him that I would.

My references were as excellent as they were fabricated. My friends, all childless, had assured him I was conscientious, responsible, caring, patient. I was none of these things. But I was cheap.

His name was Marc. In one email, I had mistakenly addressed him as Mark. When he replied, he corrected me. I don’t mean to be a pedant, he wrote, but it makes a difference A ‘k’ sounds harder. Like ‘ark’.

Personally, I couldn’t hear the difference.

He showed me around the house. He walked me through an open-plan dining room and kitchen, the living room where the baby played. There was no television. The couches faced one another.

Upstairs was the child’s room, and doors he didn’t open: his bedroom, his office.

‘No shoes in the house, by the way,’ he said. ‘Sorry. I should have mentioned it earlier.’

He looked at me while I leaned down and unlaced my sneakers. I’d thought them clean enough, but now could see the way grime had worked its way into the stitching.

When I was in my socks, he continued down the hallway to another closed door.

‘This is your room,’ he said, opening it.