‘Of course not. I was fed up and tired and…’ she trails off. ‘Yesterday was hard, seeing the orphanage and all those children. I’ve never seen that kind of poverty before. And then being with you,’ she puts her head in her hands. ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. And I’m sorry.’

The birds fly off.

‘I don’t know how to explain it, other than the last time I spent time with you, you were this sweet little boy obsessed with football and PlayStation.’

‘You can’t be mad at me because I’m not eight years old anymore.’

‘You’re right, you’re absolutely right. I thought the hardest part about coming here would be reliving old memories. I didn’t think much about how to relate to you, now that you’re—’

‘An adult.’

‘Exactly. So, I’m sorry.’ She takes something from her pocket and holds it out to him. ‘Look. I’ve kept this for years.’

He takes it from her hand. ‘It’s a really ugly piece of jewellery.’ It looks familiar, but not in a way that he remembers her wearing, it’s far too cheap for Yvonne and Mum never really wore jewellery because she would always lose or break it.

‘You gave this to me before you moved here.’

‘I did?’ He holds it up between his fingers; come to think of it, he does remember, he’d gone with Mum to the high street and picked it out for Yvonne because, ‘you loved elephants, didn’t you?’

‘No more than the next person. But for some reason you thought I did so I sort of went along with it. All the drawings, the birthday cards, everything always had an elephant on it. It was cute.’

He hands it back to her. ‘Why have you kept it?’

‘I kept all the stuff you gave me. I was never one of those people into babies, but I adored you from the first time I saw you. You had these really odd-coloured turquoise eyes, and Emma’s funny little nose and big eyebrows. She kept saying how much you looked like your dad, but I couldn’t see it. I could only see you.’ She nudges his shoulder with her own. ‘God, Kiama, she would have been over the moon with you, with how your turned out.’

‘Don’t say that. Everyone says that to me all the time. I don’t need to keep hearing it.’