He’s right. It’s painful, much more painful than she was expecting. But she needs to know. “And?”

Silence. “I didn’t feel we had much in common,” he says finally.

Rat feels the shame-blood flooding to her face. Heart racing, pins and needles. But her voice when it comes out sounds pugnacious.

“But you slept with her. Even if you didn’t like her.”

“Yes, I did. Once.” They are both silent.

“She was very, very pretty, your mother,” he says, finally. He pauses. “Not a bit like you. Or me.”

They both laugh, a little shakily. For a moment, she thinks it might be all right and she can forgive him. Then he goes on.

“But—forgive me for being crude—if you meet a strange girl in a nightclub, the last thing you imagine is that she’s actually looking to have a baby.”

“Oh,” says Rat, surprised. “Are you sure she was?”

“Quite sure. That’s what she told me on the phone, afterwards. More or less. When she found out she was pregnant.”

“And you didn’t want to have a baby? You wanted her to have an abortion?”

Gillem looks impatient. “Come now, Celia, what percentage of children alive today do you imagine were actually planned or wanted? Here you are, and now I see what a wonderful girl you are, and what a good thing it was your mother stuck by her guns, but at the time I did feel a bit taken advantage of.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it seems to me that having a child is a huge commitment that involves both parents. More than both parents, both families, really …”

He looks up as if appealing for her agreement, but doesn’t get it. He sighs. “Look, basically, I’m a cagey, misanthropic sort of person. I think the world is an ugly place, I’m not taking any chances. For me, to have a child, it’s something you do properly, when you’ve been living with a person you love deeply and are utterly committed to, when the time is right, and this child is going to be the center of this universe you’ve built together.”

Rat is trying hard to take this all in, to understand what he means, through the unbearable hurt of it. “But,” she says slowly. “I am the center of my mother’s universe. She’s a really great mother. She’s really loving, she’ll do anything for me, she’s given up her whole life to bring me up the way she thinks is right.”

Gillem is nodding, but not as if he believes her, as if he’s just humoring her, to get this unpleasant conversation over with, so he can get back to his work and his wonderful family. But Rat struggles on.