The following morning Harold stretched first his left side and then his right, pulling each joint one by one, yawning until his eyes watered. He could hear no rain. The light from the window passed through the leaves of the tree outside, sending shadows that rippled like water on the whitened wall. He stretched again and immediately fell back to sleep, not waking again until it was past eleven.

After examining his leg, Martina said it looked a little better, but she would not advise him to walk. She changed the bandages on his feet, and asked if he would spend one more day resting; her partner’s dog would like the company while she worked. The animal was too much alone.

“An aunt of mine had a dog,” he said. “It used to bite me when no one was looking.” Martina laughed, and so did Harold; although it had been a source of great loneliness and not inconsiderable pain at the time. “My mother left home just before my thirteenth birthday. She and my father were very unhappy. He drank and she wanted to travel. That’s all I remember. After she went, he got worse for a while, and then the neighbours found out. They loved mothering him. My father suddenly blossomed. He brought home many aunts. He became a bit of a Casanova.” Harold had never spoken so openly about his past. He hoped he didn’t sound pitiful.

Martina gave a smile that wriggled on her lips. “Aunts? Were they real ones?”

“Metaphorical ones. He met them in pubs. They would stay for a while and then they would go. Every month the house smelt of new scent. There was always different underwear on the washing line. I used to lie on the grass, looking up. I had never seen anything so beautiful.”

Her smile tipped into another laugh. He noticed how Martina’s face softened when she was happy, and how the colour suited her cheeks. A strand of hair escaped from the tight ponytail. He was glad she didn’t scrape it back.

For a moment all he could see in his mind’s eye was Maureen’s young face; gazing up at his, opened up, almost stripped, her soft mouth parted, waiting for what he might say next. The recalled thrill of landing her attention was so powerful Harold wished he could think of something else to amuse Martina; but he couldn’t.

She said, “Did you never see your mother again?”

“No.”

“You never looked for her?”

“Sometimes I wish I had. I would have liked to tell her I was all right, in case she was worrying. But she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. Maureen was the opposite. She seemed to know how to love David right from the start.”