‘Yes, there is a problem. Aren’t you supposed to keep him here at the school – you know, till a parent or a guardian comes?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ she says, and looks so genuinely puzzled at this deeply foreign notion that my anger evaporates.

I break all speed limits following Sue’s directions. What if Travis, right now, is helping Jack onto a wild stallion or letting him play with his pet rattler or just beating him to a pulp with a large stone? Travis’s home turns out to be a car junkyard about five miles from the school. Two or three acres of cars and trucks in varying stages of dilapidation enclosed by a chain link fence. Jack is sitting on the gravel by a trailer in the centre playing with broken pieces of toys. He ignores me when I call his name. Next to him Travis is performing an autopsy on a dead bicycle.

‘Hi. Travis, right?’

He nods.

‘Are your parents here?’

‘Nope.’

‘Okay.’ Jack’s head is still down. ‘Well ... Jack ... it’s time to go home.’

Jack doesn’t stir.

‘Jack, I said it’s time to go home.’

Jack acknowledges my presence with angry, glittering eyes. ‘You shittin’ me?’ he says.

I steal a look at him on the way home. His face is set stubbornly and he lolls in his seat, body language indicating that right now, right this minute he’d rather move in with Travis and live in his nice trailer for the rest of his natural life than come home with his mother.

‘Jack,’ I say finally, ‘are you cross I was late?’

Nothing.

‘Did you think I wasn’t going to turn up?’

Still nothing.

‘I got stopped for speeding. By the same cop. I’m sorry I was late but, you know, you could have waited.’

No comment.

‘Emmy waited.’

His eyes slide to the left just in case his sister dares to look smug.

‘Didn’t you wonder what might happen to Emmy if you abandoned her . . . don’t you think she’s too young to be left on her own?’

‘Certainly am not,’ Emmy says furiously. ‘God!’

‘What if something had happened to her?’

‘What could have happened to me?’

‘Anything, anything could have happened to you.’ I turn back to Jack. ‘What if a mountain lion had run up and bitten her head off?’

‘Mummy!’ Emmy cackles throatily.

‘How would we have got her home again? How would we have got a seatbelt round just a head?’

‘Mummy! How dare you?’ Emmy is thrilled with this unexpected twist in the conversation.

‘Think of the mess!’

Finally, Jack chances a look in my direction.

‘Look, Jack, I don’t want you going to a friend’s house or anyone’s house unless I know about it first.’

He nods.