‘Because I wasn’t with my son, Michael. Why do you think?’

‘Oh! Because—’

‘It was his birthday, and I was here. He was there.’

She laughed, but he could see the tears in her eyes.

‘Who looks after them?’ he said.

‘My mother and my sister.’

‘And…’

He was about to say, ‘And you really miss them, don’t you?’ But he just managed not to. Better not to say ignorant things, he realised. Better to let the agony peak in silence and pass – better to let her go through the pain, and remember why she was putting herself through it. Six children, all those miles away without her – their mother in a strange place, on a rock with a total stranger. For a moment Michael just managed to remember how important an eighth birthday was for a child – how the day came slowly closer, and became the biggest event the world had ever known until it finally passed, and you had to wait for the next. Maria had not been there for it – did that mean she was missing six birthdays every year? Sitting in some room in wherever it was she lived: Dumfries. Between the hospice and the school, and whatever that third job was – thinking of her three boys and her three girls, changing daily without her. And if anything bad happened, neither she nor Jao could protect them. If something went wrong, what could she do? If they were sick, or somebody did something monstrous – if they came home too upset to speak, changed forever – where was their mother when they needed her most?

‘How often do you speak?’ he said quietly.

‘Every day.’

She called up a more formal photograph. The six children sat with her and her husband.

‘Have you spoken today?’

‘Before breakfast, yes. They go to school,’ she said, and he saw her wipe her eyes.

‘That is their school dress, you see. Max, Lucas, Nikko, Miguel. It’s a nice school – not a government school.’

‘Expensive?’

‘Of course. But they study.’

‘Even Lucas?’

She laughed.

‘Of course. He knows how angry we will be! And he is… He is also very clever. So smart… and oh, Michael, look at Max…’

‘How long do you stay in the UK?’ said Michael gently.

‘I’ve been here two years. If I am lucky, two years more.’

‘Then home for good?’

‘I hope so. Please God.’

‘Please God.’

‘You don’t believe in him. Why do you say that?’

‘I’m pretending to. What about Jao?’

‘How long for him? Ah, he will stay working, for as long as he can. You don’t understand, I think. To have work here, or there – where he is… We are very, very lucky.’

Now she had started to cry.