Half an hour later Nora was asleep on a sofa under a coat, and Leo was eating a turkey sandwich slowly and carefully, the way a child eats when he has worked out that eating fast tells people something.

Arthur made no fuss of any kind.

He did not exclaim.

He did not say my God, Evelyn.

He put a plate down, and a glass of milk, and went and got a coat for a sleeping child he had met four minutes earlier, and then he stood in the kitchen doorway and said, quietly, so that Leo would not hear it:

“Do you want to tell me now, or do you want to tell me in the morning?”