Reading her diary is the very least you could do.

I’m not reading her diary.

Because then you’ll have to do something about it?

Shut up nagging, will you? She’s entitled to privacy.

So, yes, his daughter was on the cusp of adulthood. They were doing more than holding hands. So what? Finding out didn’t mean having sex. There was a whole world of mysterious pleasures open to teenagers – a world that somehow closed off as soon as you were old enough for sex to be a reasonable expectation of a reasonable relationship. He’d been seventeen when he’d lost his virginity, but that didn’t mean the whole thing had taken him by surprise.

Just read her diary.

He couldn’t read it. He had work to do downstairs. No, that wouldn’t do. Alicia came first. If she was in trouble, he’d leave the cleaning and the stock-take and go upstairs and take her room apart looking for evidence. He couldn’t read her diary because – he just couldn’t, that’s all.

Because you’d rather daydream about me. That’s selfish, Donald.

Well, and so what if it was? He’d done a good job for years. A conscientious job. A workman-like job. A stand-in’s job. He’d tried to be perfect and of course he’d failed because every parent did. But surely, in all those years, he’d saved up enough cosmic credit to buy himself a few hours off? So what if he stood here staring into space, the vacuum plugged in and ready to go, looking like a madman as he lost himself in the memory of Ava?

Alicia’s in trouble.

If he crossed the sands later, would he find Ava alone? Might they be able to repeat yesterday, the same basic events but with delicious variations that would only make the moment sweeter? Perhaps he could take her flowers.

Alicia.

“Bloody hellfire,” he said out loud. He abandoned the vacuum and took the stairs two at a time.

Her doorway opened onto a room in transition. A few teddy bears clustered around her pillow, three bright and plushy, two old and worn. There was Bad Bear, stiff and disapproving, who had lived in her cot since before she was born. Grey Rabbit, on the other hand, had worked its way up the ranks from blank obscurity to magical comfort object. The rabbit she had now wasn’t the true Grey Rabbit but a convincing imposter, secretly bought and artfully distressed after the original was left on a train. (‘No, darling, it’s all right – the Lost Toy Office will find him and send him back. They collect special toys and deliver them home to their owners.’ And while Alicia sobbed in her lap, Ellen mouthed the words to him, ‘Go and buy a new one.’) When Grey Rabbit first came to live with them, he’d been firm and perky and furry all over. Now, he flopped tragically in the middle where his stuffing had turned limp, and his fur was loved off in patches.