There was a small chip in the tabletop, he noticed, in the place his sister usually sat. It would need a bit of woodstain. ‘You know, that high and mighty stuff. I don’t have a problem with the Bible – I don’t think about it much at all – and I don’t mind what stories people want to put their faith in, honestly. But I don’t think the church should be what gives your life its meaning. Keeping in good favour with the vicar. Putting money on a plate on Sunday so the weathervane can be replaced. Doing things for charity so you can get yourself a nice pat on the back. She thinks that’s generosity, my aunty – doing jumble sales and baking cakes and giving all the proceeds to the church. Nah. That’s all to make herself look good. Real generosity is putting other people’s happiness ahead of yours. Like Joyce’s, for a start. Like mine. She never saw it that way, really. Generosity is when you’ve only got two sticks to rub together and you give them both to someone else who needs them more. That’s what I mean.’ He didn’t want his ciggie now – his mouth had gone all pasty – so he let it burn down in the ashtray. ‘I didn’t mean to rabbit on, I’m sorry. I suppose it’s just been on my mind.’

‘That’s all right. It’s what I’m here for – more or less.’ Mr Kimball closed his file. ‘You know, I’m sure she must’ve done her best. It’s never easy. Difficult enough with kids when they’re your own.’

‘Yeah, well. I’ll get round to phoning her – I will. Eventually.’ He left the tabletop alone, looked up. ‘But let me ask you something. If your daughter ever gets herself in trouble with the law, would you just wash your hands of her? That’s what my aunty did.’

‘Oh, blimey, that’s a question …’ Mr Kimball pulled his mouth into a knot. ‘I’m going to decline to answer that, if you don’t mind,’ he said, and then a warm smile spread across his face.

*

He found his sister in the draughting room, ink-washing a section of the greenhouse she’d enlarged on to a sheet of heavy Whatman paper. Florence was beside her, settled on a wooden stool, saying, ‘There, you’re getting it, that’s it. Now stop and bring it back. Apply a bit more pressure at the edge, yes, good … Lightly as you go from here. That’s perfect. Lovely even tone.’

There was a spreading gloom outside, a failed spark about the day, but Joyce’s paper was lit white beneath the angled lamp, slick wet, reflective. Her face was concentrated and more cheerful than he’d ever seen it in the throes of work before. When Florence turned to wave him over – ‘Come and look at this. Your sister just got further in ten minutes than I managed in my first two years of architecture school. We’ll make a Beaux Arts master of her yet’ – he saw right through the cotton of her blouse, so that the form of her brassiere was obvious, the lie of it across her ribs. He flicked his eyes away and took in what his sister was creating: a section so exact and flawless, drawn in such an organized array of pencil lines, that he knew somebody else had made it for her. Still, the wash she’d done was excellent, a subtle layer of ink the colour of dishwater.