Federico parked carefully, and took his time getting out of the car, retrieving his overnight bag from the back seat, and something else, some sort of soft toy, luridly green. Perhaps his mother was getting senile now, finding comfort in those sorts of things. Or perhaps the toy was his: Joan would not have been surprised to find that Federico slept with something stuffed. Waving through the window, she saw him wave back and head towards the house. She met him at the door.

‘Federico, lovely to see you.’ She touched her hair: cobwebs and dust. ‘We’re doing DIY. How are you?’

Federico set his bag down on the doorstep and pulled the green toy – an alligator – over his right hand. His fingers entered its snout. They brought it to life. ‘Terrible,’ he said. The snout moved in time with the syllables; the pink tongue flashed. Federico’s voice sounded unusually hoarse, and he was speaking with an accent, presumably Italian – his mother was Italian – that he’d never possessed before. ‘I’m sicka this journey. I’m sicka my Mama. How are you?’

‘Oh,’ Joan said. She was laughing, but she didn’t know why. The thing was too odd to strike her as funny. It was too strange that Federico should have brought a puppet along, today, after she’d found that old brochure of Claire’s. It was confusing. The feeling the alligator gave her was the same feeling she’d had with Suzanne: that this shouldn’t be done in public, that it was silly and puerile, but also somehow dangerous, somehow kicking at a vital support; and that the kicking was aimed at her, in the end: her inability to get the joke.

‘Let me in,’ the alligator said.

Joan stirred and stepped back. ‘Of course – please, come in.’ What else could she say? ‘The kettle’s on. Henry’s nipped out. I don’t suppose you saw him when you came up the road?’

Guests were not normally allowed in the kitchen, or the living room, both of which had little signs nailed to the doors that said Private, but at some point this had stopped applying to Federico, who was so quiet, so deeply unassuming, that Joan had felt compelled to make an exception for him, to show him that – in this small sense at least – he could be an exceptional man. She poured his tea.

‘You not gonna sit down?’

‘Oh yes.’ Down she sat. Federico held the alligator up on the table. It was watching Joan, who forgot to fetch her own cup, who sat in a daze, not asking questions.

‘So you finally decide, don’t you,’ the alligator said, at last.

‘Decide what?’

‘Federico. He not worth it.’ Joan opened her mouth, but the toy continued. ‘It’s OK. Most people, they give up quicker than you. You almost make him believing you actually like him!’