He’s made some notes about it, she thought: but not nearly as many as I have. If I do see a psychologist, I’ve got a lot of very strange things to say.

ALEX AND MAX PULLED UP OUTSIDE THE FLAT HE’D BOUGHT IN ROYAL Avenue just over two years ago, when his divorce from Anna was finalized. It was ideally close to one of his bases. Set on the east side of the small gravel-covered square and cordoned off from traffic at the Kings Road end, it was a quiet retreat. Comprised of the bottom two floors of an early Victorian house—one of which he had only recently managed to acquire with money left him by his mother—it included a bijou garden with access from both the basement and the ground floor.

Max took his father’s hand as they crossed the road together, to find a figure already waiting for them on the steps in the pink London twilight.

“You did say tonight?” Simon looked a bit apologetic about the intrusion. He high-fived Max, whom he knew quite well from days out with this uncle.

“Sorry, Simon, yes, absolutely. I was expecting you. Something rather strange held me up. Come inside.” Alex turned the key to the main door, then another to his own private internal entrance, and turned to his son. “You can put your stuff away properly now, Max. I think it’s all clear down there again.” He hadn’t wanted Max to stay in his own room until Will’s things were finally out of the space. He knew it would upset him, so the last few stays had seen Alex surrender most of his own bed to the boy. Now it was his plan to enlist Simon’s aid and finish the job tonight, getting the last of the boxes out of his small hallway. He knew that, as Will’s closest friend, he was pleased to have been asked to help, and to take a few things discreetly from among Will’s possessions. “Then I’ll cook us all some dinner.”

“You’ve never learned to cook quite as well as Uncle Will, Daddy.” Max looked up sadly at his father, who didn’t take offense.

“You mean, I don’t give in so often to cooking you sausage and chips like Uncle Will would!” He smiled ruefully at his son.

Max nodded, and hitched the rucksack onto his shoulder to take to his room. He noticed his uncle’s almost new laptop in the corner beside the coffee table. “Uncle Will’s PowerBook is still here. Do you think I could use it to run my Sims? The graphics are so much better on Mac than on a PC.”