CHRISTINE AND ALEX were sitting together, estranged but familiar, in the darkened room – the same room where she’d brought him the news about Zachary, months before. She was in her usual chair; Alex sat on the sofa, head bowed, hands clasped between his knees. It was the first time since he’d left that they’d been able to talk together reasonably, without recriminations – or, as at that moment, sit without talking. Outside it was autumn: even indoors the air was tangy and dank with leaf mould. The copper beech beyond the window was a tawny purple, sinking into invisibility against the dusk; something outdoors was conscious, restless, scratching along the gutter, raking the pavement. Fallen leaves from the plane trees, drifted into heaps, stirred up skittishly in gusts of wind; ragged scraps of blue cloud hunted across livid orange in the west. Christine hadn’t put the heating on: there might be a reproach in the distinct chill, she might be making a point about how she was having to save money, now that her income was so reduced. She was wearing an ancient voluminous seaweed-coloured jumper, grey in the late light, which had belonged to her father – her chin buried for warmth in its deep roll neck, long cuffs pulled down across her hands. Alex’s jacket was too thin, he was getting used to the temperatures in Garret’s Lane. Lydia kept the heating atrociously high.

Mostly Alex and Christine had talked about Isobel. Neither of them had taken to her new boyfriend – too posh, too serenely assured. Blaise had blinked his light blue eyes at her parents warily, been manifestly unimpressed: as if he had taken it upon himself already to defend Isobel against what was unsound and suspect in their generation. But they agreed he was probably too stuffy to last – although Isobel seemed surprisingly keen. Both parents had observed, separately, deploring it, how pliantly their daughter accommodated herself to a certain inflexibility in Blaise. He was pleasant, well-informed and even amusing, but he didn’t adjust to fit in with his company, didn’t hold back his opinions – about Afghanistan, say, or about welfare dependency – which were disconcertingly conservative, though not merely conventional or stupid. Isobel darted glances approvingly at him, and was eager not to contradict this man who was not at all like the people she’d grown up with. She was still touchy with her father too. All the old ease had gone from between them and Alex suffered guiltily, though he didn’t say so to Christine. He’d forced upon his daughter knowledge of himself as a sexual male, which she’d rather not have had. But that couldn’t be helped now, couldn’t be undone.