Gillem frowns. “Well, if it’s just a question of pocket money, I suppose we could always see about transferring the child support directly to you. Of course, we’d have to set you up an English bank account, but that shouldn’t be a problem. That is, if you’re planning to stay a bit, if you’ve definitively left home. Do you think your mother would be able to get along without that income? You said she had some kind of work, or money coming in?”

“I don’t understand,” says Celia. “Transfer which money to me?”

“The money I pay your mother every month—it might as well go directly to you, since you’re no longer living with her. Although if you’re living with us, you might not need so much …”

“You pay my mother?” The girl looks shocked.

“Well, child support. It’s the law.”

“How long have you been—?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’d have to check my files. Since you were about a year old, I suppose?” Since the DNA results came in and the lawyers had finally reached a settlement, is what he doesn’t want to say.

“Are you sure Vanessa got the money? Because I never—”

“Oh yes, quite sure.”

Celia chews on her lip. “I don’t think it’s right for you to be giving me money—you’re already doing too much for us. I think it would be better if I got a job.”

Kate, who has come out into the garden to see how they are getting on, now intervenes. “But, Celia, you can’t possibly get a job. Babysitting perhaps, but certainly not a real job. You’re not allowed to work until you’re sixteen.”

“Oh.” Celia looks only momentarily daunted. “What if I found something off the books?”

“Well, I think it’s extremely unlikely you’d find an employer willing to risk it. If you’re at loose ends, you’re much better off signing up for a couple weeks of English lessons than—”

“A job would be a good way of learning English,” says Celia, stubbornly.

That afternoon—just when Rat had given up hope of ever connecting with her father—Gillem asked her if she would like to come poke around his studio. She said she would.

His studio was one glassed-in room, drafty and chaotic. Yellowing newspapers, caked palettes were strewn across the floor. Surfaces were crudded in paint thick as pigeon shit. Teacups had been abandoned in odd corners, their insides clotted in ancient fungal murk. The walls were plastered in postcards, photographs, newspaper clippings, bills.