He pushed it back.
“Read the question again.”
“Bevan.”
“Again.” And then: “We’re not quitting tonight.”
That autumn he and Mum opened a savings account for me and put whatever was left in at the end of each month, which some months was forty pounds and some months was nothing.
He was paying maintenance for Otto and Mabel at the same time.
He never told me about it. Mum did, about a year later, by accident.
Half my year had a car by then. Most of them terrible. It did not bother me, because when you grow up knowing what things cost you stop wanting everything you see.
Then I turned seventeen.
There were about twenty-five people in our garden. Mum’s side, two of Bevan’s sisters, my friends, the kids.
And Roland Ash came up our drive.
Fourteen years. He never remarried and he never had anybody else, and he came up that path like a man who had been away for a weekend.
