‘Mandy, I—’ He put his coffee down on the counter top. ‘What if he cuts the trip short?’

‘He won’t.’ She sat down at the kitchen table. ‘He’s got to drive out to one of the children’s Homes with this kid. Last time he was gone a week.’

He frowned back at her. ‘Is it a regular thing, then? Removing these kids?’

‘It’s more regular than he’d like it to be. It’s been getting to him, lately. These families take it hard.’

‘Do they?’

‘He says they love their kids the same as the rest of us. And he reckons the Homes he takes them to are no good either.’

Joe’s eyebrows lifted. ‘So he’s not even solving the problem.’

‘No.’ She shifted in her chair. ‘He’s got to thinking he is the problem.’

‘Why doesn’t he leave? Do something else for a living?’

‘I think he might. It’s not easy for him, but. He comes from a long line of policemen, going back generations. He knew what he was taking on and he thought he was up to the job.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ he said. ‘I mean. I didn’t know it was that bad.’

‘He doesn’t talk about it much.’ She thought of Steve crying out in front of the house. ‘Louisa knows all about it. I’m surprised she didn’t tell you.’

He dropped his eyes and she wished she hadn’t mentioned Louisa. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘No. It’s all right.’

He drained his coffee and went back into the lounge room. She heard the rattle of his belt buckle and the armchair being shifted around as he looked for his shoes.

When he came back his shirt was tucked in, his belt buckled. The bandage was unravelling from his arm. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Go ahead.’ She smiled. From his face she thought he might want to know where he stood with her, if he could see her again.

‘Did Louisa mention me, when you spoke to her on the phone?’

She picked his shoes up from the floor and handed them to him, smarting a little. ‘She asked how you were. How you’d taken it.’

‘Did she?’

‘I told her she had a nerve, leaving me to tell you where she’d gone.’

He pushed his feet into his shoes. ‘Did she say anything else?’

‘Just that it was good to be back in England. Like I said.’

She sat back down. Joe tightened the bandage, flexing his fingers, making a fist with his good hand. Maybe she shouldn’t have told him what Louisa said on the phone. He had a way of stoking himself up about things, she’d noticed. Like prodding at a bad tooth.

‘My mum was from London,’ she said, more to distract him than anything else. ‘Lou reminds me of her in a way. Just that she was homesick the whole time.’

‘I didn’t know that.’

‘She emigrated before I was born and she spent the rest of her life griping about this country. The flies, the heat; the spiders. She never did get to like it here.’