“Yes, it does,” says Rat. “Very. Let me get this straight.” She looks at him, trying to master her irritation with this lecturing male. “You think a prisoner who has gone to a private school survives better than a prisoner who hasn’t?”

He thinks. “No, but perhaps the same person …”

“And look at your mother, she loved Shakespeare and paintings, she was so cultured, and—and—now—”

“True. It’s all chance. But I want you to have the best chance.”

“Right,” Rat says, abruptly. All the anger she thought she’d vanquished is flaming up again. “You know, all of a sudden you have all these ideas about the paintings and poetry I should be remembering next time I die in a terrorist bombing. But you know, you didn’t exactly have a very hands-on sort of role in my education. In fact, last time we talked, you made it quite clear you wished I hadn’t been born.”

He groans. “I didn’t say anything that idiotic, did I?”

“You did.”

He stares down at his plate. Then he answers very slowly, like someone walking across a rope bridge. One word wrongly placed and they might both fall into the abyss. “It’s true I wasn’t there for you, I didn’t want to see you or know about you. Because I was an idiot, and I was frightened. But now that we’ve met, I realize what a loss that was. For me, for Kate, for Artemio, for all of us. And you can either accept that. Or not.”

Rat’s lower lip is stuck out, as if she were a small child sulking, and for a moment it makes Gillem want to laugh. His own mouth trembles with the effort of staying serious, and then he’s scared she’s going to cry, because then he might, too, but no, thank God, she isn’t.

“All right,” she says. “But no lectures about my education. You’ve got no right.”

“No lectures,” he agrees, but they both feel awkward. He pays the bill quickly, and they ride home in the taxi in a painful silence.

“We’re going home?” asks Morgan.

“Yeah, because Thierry’s packed up and gone.”

“What if he comes back?”

“It’s different, now that Mama realizes he’s a slimeball, too. We’re all on the same side. He’s a coward; he’s scared of Mama. He’s always been scared of Mama. With Mama on our side, there’s nothing he can do to us.”

Morgan is down on his knees. His eye is at ground level. He is lining up one marble with another larger marble. He tosses it. Crack. The smaller marble skids across the oak floorboards and disappears under the sofa. The sofa that’s piled with needlework cushions portraying birds of paradise and dragons and trellised grapevines, embroidered fifty years ago by a stockbroker’s wife in Wiltshire.