‘Beautiful day. I can take you for a drive. I’ve got the day off. No use rushing back to DC just yet.’

‘I’ve got to work tomorrow.’

Jim rubbed his jaw. ‘Did you see that great blue heron?’

I nodded.

‘I call him Henry,’ he said. ‘I can take you back anyway, so you don’t need to take the bus.’

‘I couldn’t. You must have your own things to do.’

‘Like what? I wouldn’t ask you to stay if I didn’t want you to. You can have a day of R and R. Looks like you could use it.’

‘Okay, then. I warn you, though, you call me Duck and I’ll think of something for you. Something worse, I promise.’

He grinned, backing out of the room. ‘I’d like to see you try. Now eat your breakfast and there’s a towel if you want to have a bath before we go. We’ll want to get going soon if I’m going to get you to the city and come back today.’

‘Hang on.’

Jim hovered in the doorway, his head flush with the top of the frame. ‘What?’

‘Why do you call the heron Henry?’

‘He seems friendly, like a Henry would be. You know, like you could take the boat over and have a drink with him. He’d always give you the time of day.’

He was gone before I could reply, but it took until after I’d bathed and changed into my previous day’s clothes to realise that my cheeks were sore because I hadn’t stopped smiling. And to realise how little I’d used those muscles in the last months.

•

Jim took me back to the city in his Oldsmobile Series 60 coupe which used to belong to his father. There was a bench seat in the front and two jump seats in the back, and it was blood red, like a garnet.

‘Know how to drive?’ he asked, as we navigated the bumpy roads out of town and onto the busy highways which led towards the city.

‘No. My dad had a truck, but he never saw the point of teaching me. He taught both my brothers, of course.’

‘Well, do you want to learn?’

He spent much of the drive explaining the different dials, pedals and knobs to me. He was a good teacher, clear and patient, able to explain something without making it sound as though he thought you were stupid.

Finally, we pulled onto a side road, empty except for a few tired-looking mailboxes and trash cans with dented metal lids.

‘You ready to try?’

We swapped places and I sat in the warmth of where he’d been on the cream leather.

‘I can’t reach the pedals.’

He reached over my lap to show me the lever and together we scooted the whole front seat forwards a few inches.