‘Yeah you should see it,’ said Benedict, ‘I’ve got a computer room right at the top, in the attic. It’s brilliant!’

‘Will you miss being right by the river Benny?’ said Elvira.

Pauline looked across the table at her son. The soft hair fell in his eyes, as usual, he flicked it back like a beautiful nervous horse, as usual, but his face, instead of being closed off from them, was animated.

‘I expect I’ll go back there often and see my dad,’ he said unexpectedly, ‘but he can’t cook.’

‘He’ll have to learn Benny,’ said Elvira, ‘and so will you.’

‘I know and I already can,’ he answered. ‘I invented a little computer programme that will tell me when things are ready.’

‘Surely he doesn’t mean a timer!’ said Pauline, drinking more wine.

‘No, no,’ said Benedict, ‘what I thought was, say I was cooking stew Mum, it would connect to a computer that would tell a thing to cut up things first.’

‘There are already machines for that,’ said Pauline, laughing again, ‘come and help me in the kitchen sometime and I’ll show you!’

‘No no Mum what I mean is...’

Their exuberant shadows flickered and danced on the walls of the room.

Terence was quieter now, not asleep but leaning on his good arm; the candlelight caught his blue eyes. He thought of the risk he had taken, and of the sackfuls of mail, and of the old doctor. Of course he had resisted Pauline’s outrageous plan at first, but now so much more had happened: there was a path now that would lead him back to Nicky at last. He looked at Pauline and smiled, and she smiled back at him. She knew she was probably drunk with the relief of it all, but she knew a whole new life was starting. She saw Joseph Wain looking at her and found herself again wishing again she could touch his strange hair. I know I’m drunk, she thought. I know there’ll be horrible things about me in the News of the World. But I don’t care, I’m going to be a star with Terence! And then quite unbidden another quite different thought came into her mind. I want to tell Joseph that I did find my father, after all.