Jasmine is asleep. A dirty plate from the dinner Dominic smuggled in to her lays on the floor next to her cot, and so does Dominic. Curled around the little girl, their fingers intertwined. Simone notices at once that Dominic’s hand is bandaged and she wonders how he managed that on his own, worrying immediately where he got the wrapping from and if he told anybody why she wasn’t seeing to it. Only after this thought does she wonder if he’s in pain, or if his finger is damaged badly, and in the next breath, guilt about the order of these thoughts sends her into a spiral of self-accusation. Terry is right, she’s a bad mother. She misses things on her own, she always misses things, she doesn’t see what’s in front of her. Simone bends down and fondles Dominic’s hair, gently brushing it off his face. She feels him waking beneath her touch, but for a full minute he doesn’t open his eyes. He pretends sleep, and she pretends not to notice, and continues to softly stroke his head.

“Dom,” she whispers finally.

He opens his eyes. They are red around the edges, either from tears or tiredness.

“Dom, I’ve got to go to work. Can you see to Jas?”

He nods groggily and sits up. “What’s the time?”

“Eight-thirty.”

“Oh. I’ve got to get to school.”

“Just see to her quickly will you, sweetheart? Then give her to Terry before you go.”

He looks at her sceptically. They both know the farce that this is, the great nonsense of such easiness. But he nods anyway. “Is the job going well?” he asks her.

“It was good yesterday,” she says. “I did well. They like me. But it’s only Day Two.”

“I’m glad,” he tells her, and waits a moment, perhaps for her to reciprocate with some nicety, or to kiss him, or to squeeze his arm, but she’ll be late soon.

The cold snap is over. The night before was cool, the air tinged with deceptive chill, but this morning there is a humidity already creeping back to wrap itself around her. Today she wears black leggings that hang too loosely from her legs, a vest top, and a baggy grey sweatshirt that used to belong to Noah. The gym provided her with two turquoise logoed t-shirts, but she left them behind reception to change into on arrival. She doesn’t want to flaunt her aspirations before Terry, or to hear him confirm her own nagging suspicion that they are, after all, ridiculous.

Simone dips down next to the fancy restaurant on the corner and walks under the bridge next to the canal. She knows a bizarre and useless amount of information about this canal. It was a pet fixation of her historian father, and there was more than one occasion as a young child when he brought her here to walk with him as far as they could by the water’s edge. Even now she remembers detailed descriptions of the workings of the hydro-pneumatic lock, and her father’s ponderings about the great Nash arches.