She goes back inside the house leaving him in the yard with Purity. He wonders what Purity thinks of him. Purity who spends most of her days in an underfunded hospital or dump of an orphanage, Purity who thinks it’s extravagant to eat out, Purity who called a boy pampered because his parents flew to be by his hospital bedside.

Yvonne returns and gives a handful of notes to Purity to sort out with the driver.

‘What happened?’ she asks him. ‘Were you robbed? Attacked?’

‘I got into a fight,’ Kiama says.

‘Did they take anything? Did you call the police?’

‘No. It was my fault. It’s fine. I’m fine. Just really tired.’ Again he feels it, that deep kind of tiredness, the one which makes everything feel like it’s too much. He moves to walk past her but she blocks him. ‘Can I sleep?’ he snaps.

‘We need to talk,’ Yvonne says softly, keeping her calm, but of course she does, that’s her thing. Come to think of it, she was always like this. They’d go over to her flat for lunch and Mum would kick off because he knocked a drink over the cream carpet or got a bit of felt-tip pen on the coffee table. But if Yvonne was angry she never showed it. She never showed anything. And what was the thing about elephants, why did she let him believe she loved them, getting him to draw her pictures and acting like she loved that ugly necklace when she didn’t even like them? It makes him wonder what else she’s been hiding.

He heads inside the house and towards the stairs. She follows him but stops at the foot. ‘Can we talk? Please?’ she calls. As if he’s in the mood for this now. ‘Kiama?’ she tries again.

He storms back down and towers over her on the step above. ‘Why? Are you finally going to fill in the blanks for me?’

‘What do mean?’

‘You know what I mean. I have part of the real story now, don’t I? But what’s the rest? What’s missing?’ There has to be more, he thought about it all yesterday, about how she and Dad ever got together in the first place? How long they were together? If Mum knew? When they broke up and why? There’s so much that doesn’t make sense to him.

‘I want to tell you everything,’ she says. ‘I’m ready to tell you everything.’

Then, there’s the big question, the one it hurts to even think about, but he needs to know. ‘Was your relationship with my dad the reason we moved here?’

‘No,’ she says. Then why does she look so guilty? ‘Emma wanted to come back here for ages. It was her home.’

‘And did she know?’

‘No. Well, yes. I tried to tell her.’

‘How long did you see each other for?’