‘Ow,’ Ethan said, and she loosened her grip, just a little.

He was small and helpless and there were about another twelve or thirteen years before he would be able to look after himself. She thought of her niece, Chloë. Make that fifteen or sixteen years. How did any child manage to get through to adulthood?

‘What’s that?’ said Frieda, pointing.

‘Bus,’ said Ethan.

‘What colour is it?’

‘Red,’ he said, in an assertive, contemptuous tone, as if the question were insultingly easy.

‘We’re going to play a game,’ said Frieda. She wasn’t exactly sure if two-and-a-bit-year-olds knew how to play games, but she had to try something. ‘You’re going to call me “Carla”.’ There was no answer. She wasn’t even sure if he had heard her. ‘Ethan, can you call me Carla?’ His attention was entirely fixed on a man who was walking towards them leading – or being led by – four dogs, each of a different breed and a different size. Frieda waited until they had passed.

‘Carla,’ she said. ‘Can you say that? Go on.’

‘Carla,’ said Ethan.

‘That’s really clever. My name is Carla.’

But Ethan seemed already bored by the idea, so Frieda pointed out a bicycle to him and a bird and a car, and quite soon she was running out of objects so she was relieved when she saw the green archway ahead at the entrance of the Three Corners Garden Centre. She had never noticed it before. It was set slightly back from the road, next to a large shop selling bathroom fittings. The entrance was a narrow driveway but, behind, it opened up on both sides into a mews area that, a hundred and fifty years earlier, must have been stables.

‘What we’re going to do,’ said Frieda, ‘is find the best flower that we can and we’re going to bring it back as a present for your mummy. Is that a good idea?’ Ethan nodded. Frieda looked around and saw, with some alarm, a section of ornamental trees and climbing flowers. ‘A little flower,’ she added. ‘A really little one.’ Then she knelt down, so that her face was at the same height as Ethan and whispered to him, in what she hoped was a playfully conspiratorial tone, ‘What’s my special name? My name in our special game?’

Ethan frowned in intense concentration but said nothing.

‘Carla,’ said Frieda. ‘Carla.’

‘Carla,’ he said.

She stood up, put on her glasses. Where were the roses? She walked across to a dreadlocked, tattooed, multi-pierced girl, who was wielding a hose along a line of pots. Ethan looked up at her in fascination. She pointed to the far side, where the space was bounded by a high wall. Frieda and Ethan went across; she saw nobody, so they moved slowly along the rows of roses. They were named after characters from English history and TV celebrities and old novels and stately homes and current members of the Royal Family.

‘Carla?’ said a voice.

Veronica Ellison was a striking woman: her blonde hair was pulled back off her face, and she was wearing royal blue leggings, wedge trainers and a loose white T-shirt. She looked summery and fresh. She was regarding Frieda with an appraising expression that Frieda found disconcerting. She suddenly realized that she hadn’t thought through how she was actually going to do this. The woman hadn’t sought her out. There was no reason why she would want to talk to a stranger about Sandy, even if she had anything significant to say.

‘Dr Ellison?’

Veronica Ellison smiled at Ethan. ‘Is this your son?’

‘He’s called Ethan,’ Frieda said. ‘I look after him.’

‘Not much fun for him here,’ said Ellison. ‘Has Carla brought you to this boring gardening centre, Ethan?’

Ethan looked up at her sternly.

‘Frieda,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘He’s at a funny age,’ said Frieda.There was a pause. It was entirely up to her to make this work, she thought. ‘It’s very good of you to see me,’ she said. ‘I needed to talk to someone who knew Sandy. I’ll only be a few minutes.’

Veronica paused, obviously wondering whether she had the time for this. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘There’s a little café here. Shall we grab a coffee?’ She looked at Ethan. ‘And they do very nice ice cream.’

Ethan didn’t answer. He was shifting his weight from one foot to the other, then back again.

‘Does someone need the toilet?’ said Veronica.

‘What?’

‘I mean Ethan,’ said Veronica. ‘I’ve got a three-year-old nephew. I recognize the signs. There’s a toilet in the café.’

‘I was just about to take him,’ said Frieda, feeling like the most incompetent nanny in London. She wondered about the chances of her getting Ethan back to Sasha alive and basically uninjured. She took him into the ladies’ toilet and went through the complicated process of unfastening his dungarees and hoisting him onto the bowl, then redressing him and getting him to wash his hands. Back in the café, Veronica had ordered two coffees and a bowl of ice cream with two scoops: strawberry and chocolate. She had taken over, Frieda saw. That was good. She arranged a cushion on the bench so that Ethan could sit and help himself. Within a few seconds, the ice cream was partly in his mouth and partly around his face. Veronica contemplated him.

‘When I see a child, like Ethan, I partly want one of my own and I partly think it would just be too much of a burden.’

‘It has its compensations.’

‘You must think so, looking after other people’s children for a living. Do you find that satisfying?’

‘It’s what I do,’ said Frieda. She thought about her consulting room, the people who came there with their troubles, and here she was, a fake nanny with a false name, wearing tacky, alien clothes and feeling her way into an appropriate manner. ‘Children keep you seeing the world differently,’ she added. ‘That’s what makes it interesting, constantly surprising.’

‘I can see that. But it must be hard work.’

‘I like hard work. I need purpose – everyone does,’ said Frieda, firmly, knowing at the same instant that she sounded too like her old self.

A gleam of interest appeared in Veronica’s eyes; she sipped at her coffee and looked at Frieda. ‘I don’t quite understand you, Carla.’

Frieda was worried that Ethan might correct her again but although his eyes widened suspiciously, his mouth was too full of ice cream. ‘Why?’

‘You seem to have your hands full but then you somehow track me down. What for? What do you want from me exactly?’

Frieda took a breath. This was it. ‘I knew Sandy. He was kind to me at a difficult time of my life. For a while we were friends of a sort and then we lost touch with each other. Then I read in the paper about what happened to him. I felt … I felt I needed to talk to someone else who knew, who’d known him at the end.’

‘Why?’

‘The Sandy I knew was calm and happy and in control. I couldn’t believe something like that could happen to him.’

‘I was just his colleague,’ said Veronica. ‘I was working on a project with him.’

‘What sort of project?’

‘It’s technical,’ she said dismissively. ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘But do you recognize the Sandy I described?’

Veronica visibly hesitated. She was clearly deciding whether she could really commit herself to this. ‘What were your words? Calm? Happy?’

‘And in control. Someone who knew his place in the world.’

‘He helped you, you say.’

‘Yes.’ Frieda paused, but seeing that Veronica was waiting for her to elaborate, she said: ‘He helped me by allowing me to be myself.’

As was happening so often now, she had a sudden vivid flash of Sandy as he had once been, brimful of confidence and love. She saw the smile he turned on her. It was perhaps more painful to remember him happy than to recall him grim, angry and wretched. It almost took her breath away, the memory of what they had once had.

Veronica shook her head. ‘I liked him a great deal,’ she said. ‘He was kind. I saw that in him. He was the cleverest person I ever worked with. But he …’ She took a deep breath. ‘Things were complicated.’