“Any idiot can give advice,” said Trisha calmly. “It’s taking it that’s hard.”

It was such a sensible observation that we were all stunned into silence. Then Trisha picked up the newspaper and sauntered off.

Mum’s head was twitching, side to side. She blinked hard, and her anger just sort of subsided as she sank down into her chair again. Dad, as surprised as I was, caught my eye and pressed his lips together. Margie came running in and climbed onto Mum’s lap. I went next door and turned off the television, came back into the kitchen, and we all continued our breakfast as if I hadn’t smashed two bits of crockery and shouted at a crowd of benignly inspired pensioners.

Ten minutes later we heard Trisha lugging a suitcase downstairs. I ran up to help her with it, whispering, “Thank you,” under my breath. I was so pleased I felt like asking her back to visit again.

She patted me on the shoulder and looked over at Mum and said something like, “You’ll sleep now that I’m unselfish enough to leave.” Margie ran over and kissed her knees as she pulled her coat on. Mum and Dad stood in the living room like guilty children waiting to be told off, half watching her.

Trisha turned to address them, “Good-bye, Margery. I hope you have a safe journey home,” she said, not only taking the high ground but building a small, sustainable, eco-friendly resort there. “Good-bye, Ian.”

It would have been a splendidly dramatic exit if the taxi hadn’t taken forty minutes to arrive. We had to call three times to find out where they were.

When she had gone, Mum said that since there was a spare room now, there was no need for them to leave, but Dad cleared his throat sharply, and she spontaneously changed her mind. He’s so rarely insistent that it’s compelling when he is. They phoned the airline and changed their return flights to the next day. At Dad’s insistence, they booked into a bed-and-breakfast for the night. Mum went upstairs to pack and left me and Dad alone. I offered to come and get them the next day and take them to the airport, but he said no, they could manage perfectly well on their own and I should have a quiet evening and try to sleep. We were standing in the living room, facing each other, and he reached out to me, almost showing affection, but chickened out at the last minute and slap-patted my shoulder, muttering, “Well done.” I appreciated it, I really did.

He offered to get me a prescription for some sleeping pills, but I said I’d rather do it naturally. He chuckled indulgently as if I were opting for primal-scream therapy instead of taking an aspirin. I’m always amazed at how prescription-happy that generation was. I suppose if they now admitted it’s wrong, they’d have to own up to turning half their patients into drooling addicts.

I insisted that they allow me to drive them over to the bed-and-breakfast. I had to drop Margie off at nursery at the same time, so after an infinity of packing, dressing, and general organizing, we all bundled into the car. Margie started singing the noises-in-our-car song- parp parp peep peep- and I felt my heart swell in elation. I was going to be alone, actually alone, very, very soon. I joined in, singing the choruses, perhaps a little too joyfully. When I caught Mum’s eye in the rearview mirror, she looked terribly hurt. I apologized.

She sniffed and looked out of the window. “In front of her…” she said, or something upsetting like that. I pretended not to hear.

My attention was elsewhere: Mum and Dad were leaving. I was going home to be alone for the first time in over a week, and I had arranged for Yeni to pick Margie up at lunchtime so that I could sleep. I was days ahead of myself. Margie ran in to nursery, kicking her little legs up behind herself, working her fisted hands at her sides, all her gestures expressive of her absolute determination to enjoy the day. She stopped inside the door, scanning the horizon for the jolliest children as I pulled her coat off, and then lolloped off across the room toward a ginger-haired boy. The mums were sweet to me. Gathering around, they said they’d seen me in the paper but not to worry. I know I looked nice in the paper because they were all either smiling at me or trying not to smile. One woman got flustered and pointedly ignored me. Harry’s little blond mum was on the other side of the room, and then suddenly she was standing at my shoulder, slightly behind me, behaving like a politician’s supplicant wife on the campaign trial.

I don’t understand why she is selling herself so hard. She has perpetually untidy thin hair, which looks as if she has just got out of bed. Her eyes are small and green, the smallness being a positive benefit in one’s midthirties, in the sense that small eyes age better than big eyes. The divorcée’s tinge of bitterness and regret that infuses her conversation doesn’t show on her face. Her lips are swollen and red, as if she’s been eating all the red candies in the box and needs admonishing. Even the way she stands is profoundly sexy, with her butt sticking out, emphasizing her chest. She flirts with me, with glances and looks and the way she turns away and then back toward me. It flatters me so much I get quite flustered. Until today I comforted myself with the thought that she was probably a vacuous idiot, but now I know she isn’t. I’m quite taken with her.

I only realized Harry’s mum was there because the mum who was talking to me glanced behind my shoulder a couple of times, as though addressing my partner. She was standing so far back that I had to turn a full 180 degrees (away from everyone else) to see her. She was wearing a low-cut green sweater with a silver stick on a chain that sort of pointed down into her cleavage. Our eyes locked, and I nodded hello just as a hush descended over the room behind me. Even the babies were momentarily quiet. Everyone in the room stared at the kitchen door and sort of gasped under their collective breath.

I turned to see the young woman assistant standing in the middle of the room. She was so brown she could have been working on a sugar plantation in the Caribbean for a month. Her eyes were an eerie blue, her dark skin, her white-bleached hair making her look like a photographic negative. Aside from dramatically increasing her risk of developing a melanoma, she’ll ruin her skin using a sunlamp that much, and she’s only young. Aware of the effect she was having, she drew herself up. She actually seemed quite pleased with herself.

“Good God,” I muttered. “She shouldn’t do that.”

“She can’t help herself,” whispered Harry’s mum. “She’s tanorexic.”

It was so unexpected, I laughed out loud, even though it was obvious who we’d been talking about. I couldn’t stop myself. It would have been even more rude to stare straight at the girl and laugh, so I turned my shoulders to Harry’s mum. She laughed back and fingered her necklace.

I pointed at her. “Funny lady,” I said, and blushed. I sounded like a horrible old creep, but she didn’t seem offended. She smiled coyly and ran the tip of her index finger up and down the silver drop pendant on her necklace in a way that made me think fondly of my knob.

Back in the car, the atmosphere was thunderous. It had turned into a wet, gray day. Dad had booked a B amp;B somewhere in Paisley because it was quite near the airport but outside the two-mile rip-off radius. Unfortunately neither of us was familiar with that area. We couldn’t find the right street and ended up stuck in a grubby one-way system of streets near the city center. The rain washed across the windshield, and we couldn’t read the street signs. Big red sandstone terraces sat back from the pavement just far enough to make the house numbers unreadable. The streets were short and litter-lined. Mum barked from the backseat that no way on God’s green earth was she staying the night here.