Flo smiles at her. Impossibly, the woman appears unhurt from the fall.

Snapping from her shock, Jess tugs the Velcro restraints around her client’s emaciated ankles and wrists, on both sides. And only when her client is secured to the wheelchair does she turn her attention again to the continuing cries of the birds, so many birds. She scans the tree-line at the summit of the garden but can make no sense of the phenomenon, nor of anything else.

She grasps the handles of the chair and aims the wheelchair for the open French windows. But stops pushing when her phone trills loudly. She claws the handset from her pocket. PENNY is lit up on the screen.

32

Penny rolls a pushchair through the school gates with two foundation children walking beside her, each enraptured by their ice-lollies. Izzy drifts at the back of the group, staring at the bone artefact that Flo gave her while her lolly melts over her other hand.

‘Hey, kitten!’

Startled by the sound of Tony’s voice, both Penny and Izzy turn about.

Her father is more subdued than Izzy is used to seeing him, and paler too. One of his hands is also bandaged across the knuckles. Yet Izzy is elated to see him. She pockets the carving and leaps towards her father.

Penny struggles to share Izzy’s enthusiasm and her weak smile is soon fully erased by an onset of anxiety. ‘Tone. Didn’t expect to see you. What’s up?’

Tony grins and gathers his daughter into his arms, his rucksack swaying like a counterweight. ‘Thought I’d help out. Take this little kitten off your hands.’

‘Nah. She’s no trouble. Jess not tell you I’m having her after school?’

Tony continues to smile, though it is forced. And when he directs his attention to Penny, whatever mirth was present in his expression as he greeted Izzy is entirely absent. ‘Jess forget to tell you that I’m her father?’

‘Eh? What you on about?’

Tony turns his back on Penny and beams at his daughter. ‘What you say to a McDonalds and some Dad-time?’

‘Yes!’

Penny slaps on the pushchair’s brakes, glances at the two foundation kids to make sure they’re okay, then takes a step towards Tony. ‘Hang on, Izz. Tone. No. What you thinking? Come off it. Jess’ll—’

‘What? She’ll what? Make all the decisions, does she? Got you running round for her an’ all.’

‘It ain’t like that. Be reasonable. I’m responsible for—’

‘All these other kids.’ Tony winks at the two kids who peer back at him nervously. His energy and stance are all wrong, defiant and shifty. ‘So don’t be greedy. You got enough. This little one is coming with her dad. Women, eh, Izz! Think they got a monopoly.’

‘What’s monopoly?’ Izzy asks while staring at the dressing wrapped around her dad’s knuckles.

Penny steps closer and reaches for Izzy. ‘Tone. No.’