‘Bloody hell.’ Ali held a calming hand to her pounding heart. She pulled the music from her ears with a stab of regret. ‘I thought you were a mugger. What’re you doing here?’

‘I rang your mobile,’ he said, as if this was an answer.

‘Well, I didn’t bring it with me,’ Ali said. ‘So, what’s up? Are you running away from work?’

‘I rang you, two or three times, about an hour ago,’ Michael said with a distinct hint of reproach. ‘I kept getting voicemail, so I came home and Beatriz sent me after you.’

‘Right,’ Ali said, thinking: Jesus, an hour ago – did the phone ring? All she’d heard was Elvis Costello; all she’d seen was Daniel Lawrence. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘go on then – what’s the urgency?’

Then Michael said, ‘Ali, listen,’ in a grave voice that instantly flooded her guts with fear.

‘What?’ she said.

‘It’s Stella, she rang me at work.’

‘Hang on – what? Stella rang you?’

‘Yes.’

‘But I saw her before she left for school.’

‘Well, anyway,’ Michael said.

‘To say what?’ Ali thought about Stella this morning. Moody and uncommunicative. She hadn’t eaten anything, Ali remembered. She’d said she wasn’t hungry, and Beatriz had thrown her hands to the heavens and asked why nobody ate in this household, and Ali had laughed, because she herself was eating a bowl of porridge, right there and then, in front of Beatriz. But Stella hadn’t laughed. Instead she’d drunk a glass of water, slung her schoolbag over her shoulder and left the house. Had she said goodbye? Possibly not.

‘Right, don’t freak out,’ Michael said, and Ali felt a flash of irritation at his momentary advantage: of knowing already what she should know herself, if Stella would only talk to her as she’d apparently talked to Michael.

‘Michael, just tell me!’ A string of scenarios rushed through her mind. Stella was being bullied. She wanted to leave school. She’d lost her mobile again. She’d got a tattoo; pierced her navel; pierced a nipple.

He exhaled, a long outward breath, as if he was steeling himself. Then, ‘She’s pregnant,’ he said.

Ali stared at him. She felt stupid; stupid, naïve, devastated – all these things, all at once. She sat down heavily on the scrubby grass and put her head in her hands. Stella. Her beautiful girl.

Michael dropped down next to Ali and said, ‘Hey, it’s a shock, isn’t it?’

Ali looked at him, stricken. ‘I didn’t even know she was having sex,’ she said. ‘I had no idea. How could I not know?’

‘It’s Stella, Ali. The family clam.’

‘She told you. Why didn’t she tell me?’

‘Who knows? She rang me in the office and maybe that felt … I dunno … neutral.’