Already, she can tell that she’s going to get more and more worked up, and that afterwards she will feel thoroughly ashamed of herself.

“And what about Morgan?” she continues. “What’s supposed to happen to Morgan while Celia’s at work?”

Gillem won’t meet her gaze. “Well, Morgan’s fairly self-sufficient, isn’t he?”

Kate heaves a massive sigh of exasperation at her husband’s willful obliviousness. “That’s not the point, Gil. The point is that for whatever reason, we suddenly find ourselves responsible for these two children’s welfare. And I don’t think it very clever of you to have told Celia she can go off and—where is Zoran’s café, anyway? Isn’t it somewhere like …?”

“Dalston, I think.”

“Dalston is bloody miles away—it’s not even on the Tube, it’s National Rail. I do think Mirjana might have asked me about it first. How’s she supposed to get there and back?”

“Well, I think they were only talking about her working there a few afternoons a week. I don’t know, I didn’t think it was such a bad thing, her wanting to earn some pocket money.”

“Gillem, she’s a baby. She doesn’t speak English, and she doesn’t have any kind of city smarts whatsoever. I’m not sure I trust Mirjana on this sort of thing; Zoran’s always seemed to me a bit of an unsavory character. Aside from anything else, it’s completely illegal to hire a fifteen-year-old. Do you really want the child to be working in a cybercafé in Dalston? I mean, it’s probably a front for some kind of Balkan—”

Gillem casts a warning look towards Artemio, and Kate swiftly changes tack. “I suppose what really bothers me,” she says, “is that you all seem to have gone off and arranged this thing—”

“Who?”

“You and Celia and Mirjana. Without consulting me, or thinking through the consequences.”

“But nothing’s arranged,” Gillem protests. “If you don’t like the idea, we can say no.”

“I thought we already did,” says Kate hotly.

Already in her mind she can see the expression that will come over Celia’s face when Kate tells her that she can’t work at Zoran’s cybercafé: an expression of deliberately blank inwardness. The same look that’s now on her husband’s face.

The High Life Café is on Dalston Lane.

Its walls are covered in comic strips, and they serve coffee and cake. Just walking through the door, you feel jolted into a glucose-caffeine euphoria.