She’d always made it easier to doubt her goodness than believe it. Even now, he wasn’t certain that she’d earned her place at Leventree the rightful way. There were things he knew about her that the Mayhoods didn’t, and which no amount of ferreting in borstal files would show. For one, she’d never shown much interest or ability in drawing. Not as far as he could recollect, at least. She’d kept a diary as a girl and used to leave it on her windowsill – the cover was tattooed with doodles and cartoons she’d scribbled on, part-shaded, and perhaps it had been full of sketches and designs: he’d never dared to open it. He could half-recall an argument she’d had with Aunty Helen once about a school report, in which the only hint of praise had come from her art teacher. ‘Of course you don’t mind art – a dosser’s subject if I ever heard of one,’ their aunt had said. But he would never have imagined that his sister had been harbouring a talent for it down the years – not enough to win a competition with a hundred other girls. Dear Mouse, she’d written to him with the news about her entry being chosen, I hope you’re sitting down, I’ve something big to tell you … and he’d recognized the careful method she’d applied to the delivery of the information, all the joints smoothed out, made water-tight and plausible. It put a dull ache in his gut just thinking of it. I reckon it would make our old dad proud to know we got his knack for drawing. Both of us. Well, who was he to question that idea or trample on it? I must’ve learned a lot more from him than I ever realized. You won’t remember it but me and him would sit out in the garden in the summer and draw pictures on the flags with chalk. He taught me loads and I suppose it all went in … He knew much better than to challenge her or speak his doubts to anyone. He’d learned to bury his suspicions every time the subject was brought up, which only made a liar of him, too. But if anything accounted for her glumness lately, this was surely it. At Leventree, there were no cheats or workarounds to get things done, and she was finding out her limits.

The strangest part of it was that he owed his happiness to her. He could never have acquired it from the life his aunty had mapped out for him: a good job in the civil service and a bungalow just down the lane to raise his children. Safe from worry. Unexciting. Nothing ventured. Plain. It was a decent life for somebody, but not for him. He’d always hoped to be a person of invention, someone who inquired about the world and made a big impression on it. In her way, Joyce understood this – always had. It was why she’d wanted him to spend his weekends with her at the flat in Maidstone. It was why she hadn’t let a day go by without a phone call to the house in Borough Green, even when their aunty warned her off: ‘Can’t you let the poor lad be? You’re no good for him, Joy.’ She’d tried to show him it was possible to function on his own. She’d told him not to be a ha’penny in other people’s games, shoved back and forth to suit their needs – and he’d admired her for what she’d done, the way she’d lived, no judgement or constraints. While it was true he never should’ve been inside that car with her the night they were arrested, he was grateful now that it had happened. If she hadn’t landed him in borstal, he would never have been here.