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conversation.’
    â€˜I’m casting my mind back in the hope of finding lost pronouns that will prove you deliberately led me astray over Jude’s gender.’
    â€˜What do you want to know about Crews Hill?’ The girl does not return my smile.
    â€˜Anything. What are the high points?’
    â€˜It’s normal.’
    Jude squeezes into the gap between the table and the sink unit and sits down opposite me.
    â€˜Ross, the toast.’
    â€˜I know, Mum.’ Ross is chiselling lumps out of the chicken with an ordinary knife.
    â€˜It’s smoking.’
    â€˜OK.’
    â€˜Use the skewer. Would you like something to drink, Jude? Juice? Water?’
    â€˜Stop saying her name. It’s really irritating me.’
    â€˜Coffee, please. Cappuccino.’
    â€˜I’ll get it,’ Ross says. ‘You don’t have to hang around.’ He means me.
    â€˜Doigy, did you paint that cow?’ Jude points to a picture sellotaped to the back of the dresser.
    â€˜No,’ Ross says. ‘Actually, it’s an auroch. Ewan did it when he was four, allegedly.’
    â€˜It’s good,’ Jude says. ‘I like children’s art.’
    I stand up. ‘Right. Shout if you need anything.’
    I go through the doorway and along the passage. Ross and Jude keep silent as I ascend the stairs. They communicate wordlessly because there is no door to the kitchen. I wonder how they will achieve froth. The Bennet-Neerhoff kitchen, I assume, has a fancy coffee-making machine. I stand in front of the door to the loft room and remember the egg whisk, an old wire thing with a green handle. I stop myself from running back down to rummage through the drawers.
    I knock gently and push the door. I peer in. Ewan is on the bed, turned on his side, under the duvet. I sense something provisional about his posture, as if he suddenly flung himself down and, as if to confirm this, he shifts. His right foot emerges, covered by a sock and edged by the leg of his jeans.
    Sometimes there is an odd atmosphere around Ewan. It is like wobbling air above a hot engine; the light bent by patterns of air pockets at varying temperatures. Nothing relating to him seems quite stable, though his life, as far as I can read it, is one of utter monotony.

13
    CAUTIOUSLY, I FEEL under the front seat of the car, prodding between parts of the metal undercarriage that are sticky to the touch. Stones and grit. Hardened mud. Coins. Receipts and parking tickets. Rain drums on the roof. It is dark down here in the footwell, like the entrance to a coal chute. The ribbed rubber mat that protects the carpet is clogged with gravel, possibly from the drive of the Bennet-Neerhoffs’ house. Gravel, once walked over, gets everywhere. I was hoping for a screwed-up ball of paper that once spread open would turn out to be the Performance Review 1 (PR1) appointments’ sheet.
    It is clearly important for parents to have an effective opportunity to monitor their son’s or daughter’s progress in their learning and development and for the students to be effectively supported from home in their studies and the whole thing strongly, clearly and effectively … http://www.LloydBarronAcademy.or/cobblingrubbishtogether/#sthash.p973000Everyonetofulfiltheirpotential.
    Perhaps Ross has it. One minute he was beside me, burdened by his physical presence as if it were a drag on his existence, or even a catastrophe, and the next –
    I often marvel at the way my wholly material sons vanish.
    I get up from the mat and sit back in the driver’s seat. The school buildings are reflected in a surface sheen of water. Every window on every floor is bright with classroom lights. More cars arrive and swoosh to a stop in the marked bays of the car park. Two boys emerge through the sliding door of a camper van. Harry and Gervase Lupton who at the age of eleven were as alike as piglets but now distinguish themselves with hair gelled into