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“I’m sure he won’t be long,” Kathy said. “Would anyone like a drink?”
    “Love one,” said Tom.
    “That would be wonderful, thanks,” Patricia said.
    Was she a shade too professionally friendly and eager to please? Kathy led them along the hall, only to feel clumsy and big-boned by comparison with Patricia. Tom lingered to poke his face at the framed photographs of sixties Liverpool. “Where’d you buy these? I hope you didn’t pay much.”
    “I took them. I used to think I was creative,” Kathy said. “What will anyone have to drink?”
    “Coldest you’ve got.”
    “I’ll second that,” Patricia said. “And thanks.”
    Kathy planted a bottle of lemonade and three glasses on the table. “So while we’re waiting, tell me about your magazine.”
    “I’m freelance,” Tom said. “Go anywhere I’m told.”
    “Walt who owns it likes giving people a break. That’s why we had the competition.” As Kathy poured a spitting glassful Patricia said “Did your son send that story anywhere else before us, do you know?”
    “He never sent it anywhere.”
    “Except for us, obviously.”
    “Not to you either.” It was bound to come out, Kathy thought, and wasn’t she entitled to a little credit? “He can be shy of pushing himself,” she said. “I sent it for him.”
    “Sounds like your mummy getting you the job, Patricia.”
    Having sipped her drink, Patricia said to Kathy “Your son knew though, did he?”
    “He didn’t. I don’t think he’s convinced how good he is.”
    “We’ll use what you’re telling me if that’s all right with you. Is there anything else he mightn’t say that you think I should know?”
    Kathy thought the question rather too cunning, but said “That’s just one of his stories. There’s more than a dozen upstairs.”
    “Have you read them all? Did you decide that was the best one?”
    “One of the best, but I’m just his mother. Maybe somebody more qualified ought to look at them.”
    “I’d be happy to.”
    “If you’d like to stay here I’ll see if I can find them.”
    “Do you write yourself?”
    “I used to a bit. It wasn’t worth keeping. Well, I did keep one story I wrote about Dudley.”
    “I’d love to see that if it’s handy.”
    “I expect it may be,” Kathy said and ran upstairs with an eagerness more straightforward than she had been experiencing. Beyond her unnecessarily double bed she slid aside one hot sallow door of the Nordic wardrobe to grope among her dresses. She retrieved the exercise book with a jangle of hangers and a rustle of fabric, to find that the dull red cover bore the corpse of a moth. She crumbled the insect between finger and thumb and rubbed the silky dust to nothingness as she made for Dudley’s room.
    If possible it was even untidier than the last time she had seen it, as though to challenge her to admit she’d ventured in. Typescripts were piled next to the computer on the desk, and it took her only moments to confirm that they were Dudley’s stories. Since he was no longer bothering to hide them, mustn’t he intend them to be read? She closed his door tight and almost tripped on the edge of a stair in her haste to rejoin the journalist. “Don’t read mine now,” she said. “Save it for when you’ve time.”
    “You’d rather I read his first. I understand.”
    Perhaps in fact she realised Kathy would prefer not to watch her story being read. Dudley had liked her to read it to him when he was little, but had taken refuge in his bedroom to avoid hearing the expanded version with which she’d tried to celebrate his teens. Monty had condemned as far too motherly even the section their son used to like. Once Patricia slipped the exercise book into her scaly silver handbag and began to leaf through the typescripts, Kathy turned to the photographer. “Have you read the story he won with?”
    “I don’t read fiction. It’s just another word for lying. Photography magazines do me.”
    “Will you have