“Stop for a second, Gracie. Eve’s kitchen was a mess, but it was kind of relaxing.”

“They have the space for mess; you have to be rich to be that untidy.” She can’t remember the last time he picked up a broom, though that was the deal. He’d write for now and keep house, she’d go to work, then they’d swap. She’s too tired to go into it all again now. She sweeps the dust into a pan, tips it in the bin, replaces the broom, and walks past him into Charley’s room. Her daughter is asleep and snoring. Grace kisses her cheek, strokes her hair, and eases The Sheep-Pig from her grip, puts it on the table, and turns off the light.

Blake is sprawled on his back; he’s fallen asleep with a streak of mud on his face. She sits on his bed and watches him, feeling her face soften. If she’d gotten back earlier he might have told her something about his day, she could have said good night. She’s missing things, important things; she’s not around to see anything the kids do, or even hear about it afterward. There must be a way to arrange life better but she hasn’t found it yet. Blake’s toes are still hooked into his sneakers; as she inches them off, a penknife falls out, a small metal one, cold in her hands. She flicks it open, feeling sick; the blade is surprisingly long. She closes it and turns off the light. In the sitting room, Martin is watching television.

“Look what I found in Blake’s shoe.” She puts the knife on the table. “God knows what he’s doing with a knife.” She sits close to him for the warmth, shivering a little as if with shock.

He picks it up, looking bemused. “Where did it come from?”

“I have no idea.”

“Maybe a friend lent it to him—I used to love playing with penknives at his age.”

“It’s completely different now; the police came into school the other day to give them a talk about knife crime. He’ll be in real trouble if he’s found with this, perhaps he’s in trouble already.”

“Blake’s a good boy, there’ll be an explanation. I’ll talk to him and get the story.” He puts his arm around her. “Leave this to me, Gracie. He’ll be fine, you’ll see. You look exhausted; come to bed.”

She puts the knife in her bag where Blake won’t think to look. It slips down out of sight, beneath the coin purse and the keys, her wallet, makeup, the spare tampon. Maybe Martin’s right; questions might be better coming from him, man to man.

In bed Martin turns toward her with his smile. “Hello, stranger,” he murmurs as his arms wrap around her. There’s always this, she tells herself as their faces meet, this at the end of the day, when they are together and warm and everything else melts away.

But it isn’t quite the end of the day; once he’s asleep, she gets out of bed again and sits down to write at the kitchen table. Now and again she stares out at the trains passing beyond the community gardens, beads of light traveling in the dark. Thousands of miles away the sun is rising in the mountains in the north of Zimbabwe where her grandfather lived on his farm. He used to tell her to walk slowly, look carefully in case you miss a sick calf or the moment when the maize is ripe for harvest. She wishes now she’d asked him how the hell you do that while you fit in everything else; no one walks slowly in London, not when you have a job and kids or hostile youths near your home. She misses him, she misses her whole family, the neighbors she used to have, all the friends. Life had seemed so much easier back home.