“No. Have you?”

“I really, really want a rabbit. Or maybe a kitten. But kittens grow up and get run over.”

Jean couldn’t help laughing. She was finding Margaret’s scattergun approach to conversation and morbid imagination thoroughly entertaining. She felt more than a hint of envy for Gretchen; to have the unthinking love of a daughter like this, to watch her grow every day and know that she was completely yours.

They had reached the newsstand by now and after some prompting, Margaret shyly pointed out a copy of Girl. Her gratitude when she at last had the magazine in her hands was out of all proportion to its value; she was almost vibrating with excitement.

Spontaneous generosity was a new experience for Jean—until today such opportunities had seldom come her way and would probably have gone unnoticed. She and her mother exchanged small, practical gifts at Christmas, of course, but she was a stranger to more ambitious forms of giving. Dorrie had long ago forbidden her from sending anything to Kitale for her or the children. The postage was exorbitant and things were too likely to be impounded at customs or go astray.

It used to give Jean a pang when she passed a shop window and saw some toy or trinket that would have delighted her nephew or niece, and for a while she had ignored Dorrie’s injunction and sent gifts anyway. But no word ever came back to say that they had been received and Jean couldn’t bring herself to ask, so she had let the habit lapse. Recalling all this now, she felt ashamed of herself.

Beside her Margaret was jabbering away. Jean caught up as she said, “Have you ever seen one?”

“One what?”

“Angel.”

“No,” Jean replied, firmly, and then relented a little. “But then I’ve never seen gravity either, but it’s there all the same.”

Margaret seemed quietly impressed by this. “I’ve never seen one,” she said. “But I’ve heard them.”

This was such an unexpected remark, delivered in such a matter-of-fact way that Jean felt her scalp prickle. “What do they say?” she asked with a sense of unease.

“They don’t say. They sing. That’s how I know they are angel voices.”

“Oh. Do they sing hymns?”

“No. Just funny words, over and over. Like gabardine.”

Jean gave a burst of laughter. What sort of practical-minded angel concerned itself with raincoat fabric? An angel whose mother was a dressmaker, perhaps?

Margaret laughed too, revealing a half-built smile of milk teeth, gaps and new serrated incisors. “Don’t you ever hear voices?” she asked.

“Sort of,” said Jean, treading carefully. She had no intention of encouraging any supernatural claptrap, but there was no need to lay about her with common sense like a great fly whisk. “But my voices tend to say things like, ‘That’s probably enough cake for you,’ or ‘Isn’t it about time you wrote to your sister?’”

Margaret was not to be so easily fobbed off. “Oh, I have those too, but that’s not the same. That’s just me thinking things. Angel voices are different.”