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with my father’s first stroke, while three colleagues, including my fiancé Barry, were kept on and retrained. Within six months Barry was my exfiancé and engaged to somebody in Payroll. I may then have “devoted” myself to my father for sixteen years, denying myself the chance to meet someone else, but for most of that time I had been too isolated and easily discouraged to imagine any such thing, anyway. I did not, as I had also told Col, “enjoy my life,” and if he left me I would spend the restof it mourning the expense of my error and trying not to think too much about what it had displaced. It would be incalculable.
    I would have to get rid of the baby. I could make arrangements as soon as I got back. A month from now, it would be over. Immediately I thought this I felt sick and suddenly wanted my tea sweet, though I didn’t usually. I reached into the sugar bowl and noticed a folded slip of paper, crammed among the packets. It read, in handwritten letters,
    Cash for 4 door sedan in good condition. Private Text CAR to 07883 684512 Discretion guaranteed
    I glanced over at the next table, and there was a slip of paper in the bowl of sugar packets there, too, and at the table in front of me. Every bowl on every table I could see had one.
    I drank my tea. I fingered the piece of paper, turning it over and over. Practicalities flooded into my mind: all the reasons why this was an outrageous thing to contemplate. What its consequences would be in the next hour, the next twelve hours, in a day’s time. I thought of a month from now, a year, ten years. I thought how simple the next step would be. Merely texting one word to a telephone number, such an insignificant thing to do. How could a thing so small affect very much? I thought of my baby and the decision I had just reached. I thought of the need to make this effort to survive. I could settle the matter quickly. I drained my cup and went outside.
    I texted the word CAR to the number. My telephone rang, and a man’s voice, foreign, harsh, and breathless, asked me where I was calling from. When I told him, he demanded I call him back in exactly half an hour. I hung around shivering, and then I did so, and when he began to interrogate me, my voice shook. I realized I didn’t know anything about the rental car except that it was a Vauxhall. I read him the license number written on the key tab.
    “I don’t know the exact model or the mileage. It’s pretty new, I think,” I told him. There was a silence. “It’s silver,” I added.
    “Yes, I see it’s silver,” he said. “You sell or not? You waste my time?”
    I stared round at the car park, the fuel pumps, the café windows, the scrub and farmland beyond, but I couldn’t see anyone.
    “You sell or not?”
    “It’s just, the car … I don’t know if you … if you …,” I said. “Imean, I haven’t done this before. The thing is, I need money. The car doesn’t actually—”
    “Don’t give me details. That’s none of my business. You need money, I need car. You got a car, if I want it, I pay you cash. No papers. That’s it. Okay?”
    “Okay. But I don’t even know who—”
    “No names! No documents, you understand? No papers. That way it’s all private, okay?”
    “Yes, but how much—”
    “Listen. You come back here tomorrow. Just you. You understand?”
    Just then I heard the cry of a young child in the background. “Wait,” he said. He spoke a few words in another language. A pause, then I heard him speak in English. “Ssh, hey, hey, Anna? It’s all right, wait just a minute, Papa’s busy …”
    I caught my breath. His voice had grown musical and soft.
    There were some noises of movement and murmuring from the child and then, “Good girl, Anna. Papa’s baby …”
    He would think me insane if I began to cry.
    “Okay, listen,” he said to me. “So you come back tomorrow. Exactly same place. Then you call me again, same time, I tell you where you bring me the car. If