‘Look, Dad, I really can’t speak for Dylan, can I?’ Lily was sounding faintly exasperated. As she spoke the door behind her burst open and Matteo appeared.

‘Hey, Lucas, how’s it going?’

‘Great, thanks, Matteo. And how’s the world of chemical engineering?’

‘Busy. Glad Dylan is on the radar.’

‘Yes, that is tremendous news. We’re all very relieved.’

‘Matteo’s auditioning for a second singer,’ Lily pitched in eagerly, play-wrestling Matteo out of the way. ‘Loads have applied. It’s mad. Including a couple of girls from school. Katya the goth, remember her? And Jane Jessop. They were both in the choir. We’ve got the first ten coming to try out this afternoon.’

‘That sounds fun. Let me know the next gig date. Maybe I’ll come.’

‘Really?’

‘Sure,’ Lucas lied, his mind flying back to the days when Esther had played groupie, while he’d marvelled at her commitment to a cause that really didn’t warrant it. If Lily had been in the band, yes, but not Matteo, bellowing into a mic fizzing with static while he and two mates raked at guitars, and another clashed around with some drums.

After the call, Lucas sank back into his chair. His eyelids wanted to close. He fought it. Defeated old men slept during the day, and he wasn’t one of those.

18

The garden centre, driven past so many times, proved a revelation. There was a spacious car park, an airy café, its tables spilling out onto an attractive patio in the hanging-plant section, and wide concrete aisles that made the manoeuvring of her trolley a breeze.

That morning, she had resolved to clean Dylan’s room, but then hovered at the door, unable to go in. He was okay – or at least, he had been, at the moment of sending the card of Paris’s most famous landmark, with the printed handwritten message that managed to seem distant and close all at the same time. But since then who knew? Esther had frozen with her fingers clasping the door handle. To embark on the task of changing the rumpled bedding, to plunge her hands into the piles of paper and gadgets ranged around the shelves, had grown impossible in the same instant. It was too close to an admission that Dylan would not be home any time soon; that they were all still at the beginning of what had to be gone through.