‘He’ll find out,’ she said. ‘If you don’t take him to the Home soon, he’ll get a call from them, won’t he?’

He nodded again, deflated. The child sighed in Mandy’s arms. She rubbed his back and moved him up to her shoulder.

‘I think we should consider adoption,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Ray would arrange it if I asked.’

‘For God’s sake, haven’t I already told you no? Haven’t I been crystal clear about that?’

‘I won’t take him to the Home. I won’t do it.’

‘We’ve been over this!’ She swayed with the child, patting his backside. ‘He’s not ours, Steve. I can tell he wants his mum. I can feel it in him.’

He rubbed his hands up and down over his face. ‘If I take him back to his mother, they’ll just send some other bastard back to get him.’

She passed the baby to Steve. ‘We can’t keep him.’

‘We could, darl. It’d be the best thing for him.’

She walked over to the back door. The sky was turning violet where the sun was coming up. It brought to mind Joe Green, standing where she was now, in his shirtsleeves, drinking coffee. It was an effort not to remember the rest of it, not to run through it again in her head. More than a week had passed and still the memory was fresh and shocking. It had been greedy and abandoned and revelatory. She didn’t know what would happen if she saw him again. She might not be able to help herself.

At the same time, she knew it wasn’t love. It was a physical thing entirely, a call of the flesh that would burn out soon enough. And what she had with Steve, next to that, felt closer to love. Faded and damaged and disappointing at times, but maybe that’s what love came to look like after a while.

Steve stood beside her with the baby in his arms. ‘I don’t think I can give him up, Mandy.’

‘And I don’t think I can be his mother.’

‘Couldn’t you give it a try for a while? If it doesn’t work out I’ll get in touch with Ray.’

The sky was almost blue now behind the tea trees. She breathed in and out, slow and steady. She could feel the hope in him. He had too much love to give, this was the trouble. He needed more in return than she could offer.

‘I’ll give it a short while,’ she said. ‘Two weeks at the most. I mean it.’

He threw his head back in relief.

‘We’ll need to keep him inside, out of sight. Keep him quiet. We don’t want people talking.’

He kissed the baby’s head. ‘We can manage that, can’t we, William?’

She froze. ‘What did you call him?’

‘William,’ he said, as if this were reasonable. ‘I named him William, after my old man.’

‘You named him –?’

‘Why not? He needs a name.’

‘Doesn’t he have a name already?’