‘I swear it.’ She held up her right hand. ‘By Rory.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He lowered his head and kissed the springy, delicate centre of her.

It set her off laughing again.

Three or four times a year, when Tom was still at school, Audrey would invite the Loxleys to join her on Saturday for afternoon tea. Bill was always out on these occasions, playing golf. ‘A man needs an interest to take him out of himself,’ said Audrey. Her eyes fl ickered over Tom, embedded in unmanly selfhood on the far side of her third-best tablecloth.

Tom would rather not have been there, but was at that stage of ravenous adolescence where he could not forgo the sponges, tarts and sliced ham that marked the ritual. There was always a plate of triangular sandwiches, another of tinned asparagus. A proper English tea: it was a ceremony dear to Audrey, setting her apart from mere Australians.

Shona, driven by the same sullen need as Tom, would slouch from her room. Silently they competed for butternut crackles.

It soon became apparent to Tom that these afternoons served an unvoiced purpose. Newcomers to the area, extravagantly welcomed by Audrey, in time always merited a good talking to. Shop assistants, bank tellers, tradesmen: Audrey assured the Loxleys that she stood no nonsense from any of them. Nothing cleared the air like a good talking to, she said; unless it was giving the offender a piece of her mind.

A summons to tea invariably followed one of these showdowns, from which Audrey emerged energised and triumphant. Over chocolate ripple cake and Scotch fingers, she went over the score: the kindness offered, the advantage taken, the forbearance shown, the treachery exposed. From time to time Iris murmured,‘No!’ or ‘What a thing!’ but these contributions were redundant. Her sister-in-law’s presence was all that Audrey required. An audience justified re-enactment, doubling the pleasures of victory. And then, Iris and Tom had a particular value to Audrey. Occasionally an adversary fought back, accusing her of malice or worse. But Audrey knew these charges were down to spite. She knew she was a good person. The Loxleys proved it. Here they were even now at her table, grateful recipients of her bounty. If now and then a wrinkle of self-doubt threatened her composure, it vanished under the glare of her benevolence. To give and not count the cost, remembered Audrey, while making a mental note that a cheaper brand of biscuit would do very well. The quantity Tommy ate while remaining bone thin! Worms, thought Audrey; a diagnosis that amplified her contentment.

She grew expansive. She grew vivacious. It should have been horrible but was in fact funny. Audrey was a good mimic: she could do Liberace, Kenneth Williams, old Mrs Godfrey next door. She hoarded jokes, and brought them out with inventive, po-faced embellishments. Even Shona stopped eating long enough to snicker.

Overnight Tom lost his taste for sweets. He was in his last year at school, and there was homework to excuse him from Audrey’s teas. Now the thought of them disgusted him, his aunt’s zestful detailing of her coups as sickening as spray-can cream, as the chemical sweetness of supermarket Swiss roll.

When Audrey’s next summons arrived, Tom pleaded his case. He remained in the annexe, bent over his books. Slowly light squeezed its way across the room. After a while there came the mutter of TV on the other side of the wall. Tom knew what it signified: his aunt was not ready to dispel the cosy fumes generated by goodwill and self-satisfaction. Tea had given way to sherry and re-runs of Benny Hill or On the Buses.

Tom went into the kitchen to make another mug of Maxwell House. It could not go on forever, he reminded himself. With his palms flat on the benchtop while the jug boiled, he looked out at the low evening sun. A nylon half-curtain was strung across the window. He noticed that the play of light magnifi ed the weave and overlaid the fabric with a faint moiré sheen.

He had returned to his essay when a sound fi ltered through his concentration. After a moment he carried his mug across the room and stood close to the wall. He could hear the canned merriment that greeted each quip, but what had captured his attention was the loose, round noise of his mother’s laughter. It was the rarity of the phenomenon that was striking. Tom couldn’t remember the last time he had heard her laugh like that with him.

With the ad break the volume went up and Iris fell silent. Still her son stayed where he was, resting the side of his head against the wall. From time to time he blew lightly on his coffee. When it was cool enough to drink he went back to his work.

Tom had left Nelly at the Preserve and was walking home, attended by a dwarf-double shadow-printed on walls, when he thought of the skipping girl. She had seemed corpse-like, deprived of animating light. Now it occurred to him that her neon had served to cloak the grubby relationship between buyer and seller with obscuring magic. With it switched off, she no longer dazzled her observers but displayed herself for what she was.

A silky, elongated column came into view on the opposite side of the road. It wavered before a window that was sprayed with stars of frost and promised Gift Solutions; Tom watched it rise and sway.

He dodged cars and a grim, lycra-ed cyclist. ‘Mogs!’ he called. ‘Mogs!’

‘Tom! What a super surprise!’ Under the brim of her pale straw hat, Mogs was gold-dusted across the nose.

She was saying, ‘I must say you do look well.’

Tom said, ‘A wonderful thing happened yesterday.’ He said, ‘Coffee?’

‘Well, I ought to be getting back to the gallery-’

But he had seized her arm, above its cuff of shining bracelets.‘There’s a place just past the lights.’A story has no meaning until it is told, and Tom was an Ancient Mariner, brimful of narrative. It overflowed and merged with the changeful kaleidoscope of the street, the cyclist’s turquoise rump poised above his saddle, a six-foot koala jangling a bucket of coins, the silver loop glinting on the lid of the manhole at Mogs’s sandalled feet. ‘Come on,’ said Tom. He considered reaching up and licking her freckles.

‘That’s the most amazing story.’ Mogs’s eyes were glittery. ‘It’s

just so Incredible Journey, plus plus.’

She asked, ‘And he’s all right?’

‘Seems to be. Exhausted, of course. And frighteningly thin.’

‘Oh, the poor love.’

‘He was walking so slowly. Barely moving.’ Tom said, ‘We could have missed him so easily. A few minutes later and we’d have been gone. I’m not sure he’d have had the strength to follow.’

‘Don’t, no. That’s so what you mustn’t do.’ Mogs raised her voice over the industrial gargling of the espresso machine. ‘Once you start thinking what might have happened, there’s no end to the horror. He did find you, the brave old thing.’ She blew her nose resolutely on a paper napkin. The green jewel flashed on her fi nger.

A waitress asked, ‘You guys right there? More coffee? Another wheatgrass?’

‘Oh-no thank you. That was just great.’

‘Just the bill, please.’

Mogs, gathering up bag and hat and sunglasses, said, ‘You know, I’ve always meant to try this place. Isn’t that clock perfect? And these butterfl y coasters. Brilliant.’

The bill arrived on a hexagonal plastic saucer, khaki with narrow orange triangles around the rim.

‘ Carson comes here,’ went on Mogs.‘Rory likes it.’ She fi tted her hat over her glossy crimson head. ‘It’s so sweet, him and Rory, don’t you think?’

‘I guess.’ Tom was thinking, Sweet!

‘Oh, awfully sad, too, of course. You’re absolutely right.’ Mogs said, ‘I mean, I simply can’t imagine it, can you? Not being able to acknowledge your child?’

Tom had his wallet out. He went through the business of selecting a note and placing it on the saucer, actions he accomplished with the slow deliberation of a dream. Then he said, ‘Mogs, what are you talking about?’