Daniel’s small presence was right beside me. It was the most clearly I’d felt him in days, and I wanted him to stay. I couldn’t bear him to leave me. If I didn’t look, I could reach down and perhaps a small, warm hand would slip into mine. Time disjointed, moments shuffled like cards. Here was the car, the promised car, and there was Daniel, sitting on the counter in the kitchen of our London flat wearing his pyjamas, his wellington boots, his swimming goggles and his Ninja Mutant Hero Turtles cape, eating a piece of toast and jam and describing this very Alfa Romeo to me. ‘It’s a coupé, Mummy, with two seats and it can do nought to sixty in four seconds. And it’s got a top speed of almost two hundred miles per hour.’ He had jam on his chin – strawberry jam – as he demonstrated the velocity of the car with his hand. ‘It’s the best car ever!’ he’d said. ‘Nobody has never ever engineered a car even half as good.’

Daniel never saw this car, but he loved it. It should have been part of his future.

‘Do you think it’ll still work?’ I asked Joe. The words came out sticky. I was too full of emotion.

‘She’ll need a bit of attention.’ Joe bent to examine a tiny mark, then he straightened up and looked at me, through the gloom. ‘I thought I’d ask Francesco if he’d like to help me get her back on the road. What do you think?’

Francesco? It should have been Daniel.

‘That’s a great idea,’ I said.

‘You’re not sure?’

‘Yes. No. I mean, I am sure. It’s a really good idea. Do you think Vito will let him?’

‘Vito doesn’t have to know.’

‘If he finds out Francesco’s been lying to him…’

‘We’ll find a way.’

‘It means we’d have to stay here,’ I said quietly, ‘at least until the car was fixed.’

‘One of us would have to stay anyway, until the kittens were big enough to rehome.’

I nodded. We breathed together into the darkness.

Joe said: ‘You could leave now, if you want, Edie. You could go home. I can take care of everything from here.’

‘There’s no rush,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to be back in Bristol until the end of the school holidays.’ I brushed a fly from my arm. I could hear Joe’s breath, in and out. ‘If you don’t mind me staying, that is,’ I said.

‘No,’ Joe replied. ‘I don’t mind.’