'Well ... I actually got offered another job.'

'You did?' There was a little ripple of applause, which made me blush.

'Oh, I'm not going to take it, but it's fine. I feel I've sort of moved on, just for being offered a job.'

William said: 'So what was the job?'

'Just something in New York.'

They all stared at me.

'You got a job offer in New York?'

'Yes.'

'A paid job?'

'With accommodation,' I said quietly.

'And you wouldn't have to wear that G.o.dawful shiny green dress?'

'I hardly think my outfit was a good enough reason to emigrate.' I laughed. n.o.body else did. 'Oh, come on,' I said.

They were all still staring at me. Leanne's mouth might actually have been hanging open a little.

'New Y ork New York?'

'You don't know the whole story. I can't go now. I have Lily to sort out.'

'The daughter of your ex-employer.' Jake was frowning at me.

'Well, he was more than my employer. But yes.'

'Does she have no family of her own, Louisa?' Daphne leaned forward.

'It's complicated.'

They all looked at each other.

Marc put his pad on his lap. 'How much do you feel you've really learned from these sessions, Louisa?'I had received the package from New York: a bundle of doc.u.ments, with immigration and health- insurance forms, clipped together with a thick piece of cream notepaper on which Mr Leonard M. Gopnik forwarded me a formal offer to work for his family. I had locked myself into the bathroom to read it, then read it a second time, converted the salary to pounds, sighed for a bit, and promised myself I would not Google the address.

After I'd Googled the address I resisted the brief urge to lie on the floor in a foetal position. Then I got a grip, stood up and flushed the loo (in case Lily wondered what I was doing there), washed my hands (out of habit), and took it all into my bedroom where I stuffed it into the drawer under my bed and told myself I would never look at it again.

That night she had knocked on my bedroom door shortly before midnight.

Can I stay here? I don't really want to go back to my mum' s.

Y ou can stay as long as you want.

She had lain down on the other side of my bed and curled up in a little ball. I watched her sleep, then pulled the duvet over her.

Will's daughter needed me. It was as simple as that. And, whatever my sister said, I owed him. Here was a way to feel I hadn't been completely useless. I could still do something for him.

And that envelope proved I was someone who could get a decent job offer. That was progress. I had friends, a sort of boyfriend, even. This, too, was progress.

I ignored Nathan's missed calls and deleted his voicemail messages. I would explain it all to him in a day or two. It felt, if not like a plan, then as close to one as I was going to get right now.

Sam was due shortly after I got back on Tuesday. He texted at seven to say he was going to be late. He sent another at a quarter past eight, saying he wasn't sure what time he would make it. I'd felt flat all day, struggling with the stasis that comes from not having a job to go to, worries about how I was going to pay my bills, and being trapped in an apartment with someone else who similarly had nowhere to go and I was unwilling to leave by herself. At half nine the buzzer went. Sam was at the front door, still in uniform.

I let him in and stepped out into the corridor, closing the front door behind me. He emerged from the stairwell and walked towards me, his head down. He was grey with exhaustion and gave off a strange, disturbed energy.

'I thought you weren't coming. What happened? Are you okay?'

'I'm being hauled up in front of Disciplinary.'

'What?'

'Another crew saw my rig outside the night we met Garside. They told Control. I couldn't give them a good answer as to why we were attending something that wasn't on the system.'

'So what happened?'

'I fudged it, said someone had come running out and asked us for help. And that it had turned out to be a prank. Donna backed me up, thank G.o.d. But they're not happy.'

'It's not that bad, surely?'

'And one of the A and E nurses asked Lily how she knew me. And she said I'd given her a lift home from a nightclub.'

My hand went to my mouth. 'What does that mean?''The union's arguing my case. But if they find against me I'll be suspended. Or worse.' A new, deep furrow had etched it's way between his brows.

'Because of us. Sam, I'm so sorry.'

He shook his head. 'She wasn't to know.'

I was going to step forward and hold him then, to put my arms around him, rest my face against his. But something held me back: a sudden, unbidden image of Will, turning his face away from me, unreachable in his unhappiness. I faltered, then a second too late, reached out a hand instead and touched Sam's arm. He glanced down at it, frowning slightly, and I had the slightly discomfiting sensation that he knew something of what had just pa.s.sed through my head.

'You could always give it up and raise your chickens. Build your house.' I heard my voice, trying too hard. 'You've got options! A man like you. You could do anything!'

He gave a half-smile that didn't reach his eyes. He kept staring at my hand.

We stood there for an awkward moment. 'I'd better go. Oh,' he said, holding out a parcel. 'Someone left this by the door. Didn't think it would last long in your lobby.'

'Come in, please.' I took it from him, feeling I had let him down. 'Let me cook you something badly.

Come on.'

'I'd better get home.'

He walked back down the corridor before I could say anything else.

From the window, I watched him leave, walking stiffly back to his motorbike, and I felt a momentary cloud pa.s.s over me again. Don't get too close. And then I remembered Marc's advice at the end of the last session: Understand that your grieving, anxious brain is simply responding to cortisol spikes. It is perfectly natural to be fearful of getting close to anyone. Some days I felt as if I had two cartoon advisers constantly arguing on each side of my head.

In the living room Lily turned away from the television. 'Was that Ambulance Sam?'

'Yup.'

She went back to the television. Then the parcel grabbed her attention. 'What's that?'

'Oh. It was in the lobby. It's addressed to you.'

She stared suspiciously at it, as if she were still too conscious of the possibility of unpleasant surprises. Then she peeled back the layers of wrapping to reveal a leather-bound photograph alb.u.m, its cover embossed with 'For Lily (Traynor)'.

She opened it slowly, and there, on the first page, covered with tissue, was the black and white photograph of a baby. Underneath it was a handwritten note.

Your father weighed 9lb 2oz. I was absolutely furious with him for being so big, as I'd been told I'd have a nice small one!

He was a very cross baby and kept me running ragged for months. But when he smiled ... Oh! Old ladies would cross the road to tickle his cheeks (he hated this, of course).

I sat down beside her. Lily flicked forward two pages and there was Will, in a royal blue prep-school uniform and cap, scowling at the camera. The note underneath read: Will hated that school cap so much that he hid it in the dog' s basket. The second one he 'lost' in a pond. The third time his father threatened to stop his pocket money, but he simply traded football cards until he'd made it back. Even the school couldn' t make him wear it I think he had a weekly detention until he was thirteen.

Lily touched his face. 'I looked like him when I was small.''Well,' I said, 'he's your dad.'

She allowed herself a small smile, then turned to the next page. 'Look. Look at this one.'

In the next photograph he smiled directly out at the camera the same skiing-holiday picture that had been in his bedroom when we had first met. I gazed at his beautiful face and the familiar wave of sadness pa.s.sed over me. And then, unexpectedly, Lily started to laugh. 'Look! Look at this one!' Will, his face covered with mud after a rugby game, another where he was dressed as a devil, taking a running jump off a haystack. A page of silliness Will as prankster, laughing, human. I thought of the typed sheet Marc had given me after I had missed Idealization Week: It is important not to turn the dead into saints. n.o.body can walk in the shadow of a saint.

I wanted you to see your father before his accident. He was fiercely ambitious and professional, yes, but I also remember times where he slid off his chair laughing, or danced with the dog, or came home covered with bruises because of some ridiculous dare. He once shoved his sister' s face into a bowl of sherry trifle (picture on right) because she had said he wouldn' t, and I wanted to be cross with him as it had taken me simply ages to make, but you really could never be cross with Will for very long.

No, you never could. Lily flicked through the other pictures, all with little notes beside them. This Will, rising from the pages, was not a two-line piece in a newspaper, a careful obituary, a solemn photograph ill.u.s.trating a sad tale in a long-running legal debate; this was a man alive, three-dimensional. I gazed at each picture, distantly aware of each lump in my throat as it rose and was overcome.

A card had slid out onto the floor. I picked it up and scanned the two-line message. 'She wants to come and see you.'

Lily could barely tear her eyes from the alb.u.m.

'What do you think, Lily? Are you up for it?'

It took her a moment to hear me. 'I don't think so. I mean, it's nice, but ...'

The mood changed. She closed the leather cover, put it neatly to the side of the sofa and turned back to the television. A few minutes later, without saying a word, she moved up the sofa beside me and let her head fall onto my shoulder.

That night, after Lily had gone to bed, I emailed Nathan.

I'm sorry. I can't take i t. It's a long story, but I have Wi l l's daughter l iving wi th me and a lot has been going on and I can't up and leave her. I have to do what's right. I'l l try to explain in brief ...

I ended, Thank you for thinking of me.

I emailed Mr Gopnik, thanking him for his offer and stating that due to a change in circ.u.mstances I was very sorry but I wouldn't be able to take the job. I wanted to write more, but the huge knot in my stomach seemed to have drained all the energy from my fingertips.

I waited an hour but neither of them responded. When I walked back into the empty living room to turn off the lights the photograph alb.u.m was gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.

'Well, well ... If it isn't the employee of the year.'

I put the bag containing my uniform and wig down on the counter. The tables of the Shamrock and Clover were already full by breakfast time; a plump forty-something businessman, whose drooping head suggested an early start on the hard stuff, gazed blearily up at me, cradling his gla.s.s between fat hands.

Vera was at the far end, angrily shifting tables and people's feet to sweep under them as if she were chasing mice.

I was wearing a man's style blue shirt it was easier to feel confident if you were wearing men's clothes, I had decided and observed, distantly, that it was almost the same shade as Richard's. 'Richard I wanted to talk to you about what happened last week.'

Around us the airport was half full of bank-holiday pa.s.sengers; there were fewer suits than usual, and an undertow of small, crying children. Behind the till, a new banner offered the chance to 'Get Your Trip Off to a Good Start! Coffee, Croissant and a Chaser!' Richard moved briskly around the bar, placing newly filled cups of coffee and plastic-wrapped cereal bars on a tray, his brow furrowed in concentration. 'Don't bother. Is the uniform clean?'

He reached past me for the plastic bag and pulled out my green dress. He scanned it carefully under the strip-lights, his face set in a half-grimace, as if he were primed to spot unsavoury marks. I half expected him to sniff it.

'Of course it's clean.'

'It needs to be in a suitable condition for a new employee to wear.'

'It was washed yesterday,' I snapped.

I noticed suddenly that a new version of Celtic Pan Pipes was playing. Fewer harp strings. Heavy on the flute.

'Right. We have some paperwork in the back that you need to sign. I'll go and get it and you can do that here. And then that's it.'

'Maybe we could just do this somewhere a bit more ... private?'

Richard Percival didn't look at me. 'Too busy, I'm afraid. I have a hundred things to do and I'm one staff member down today.' He bustled past me officiously, counting aloud the remaining bags of Scampi Fries hanging by the optics. 'Six ... seven ... Vera, can you serve that gentleman over there, please?'

'Yes, well, that's what I wanted to talk to you about. I was wondering if there was any way you '

'Eight ... nine ... The wig.'

'What?'

'Where's the wig?'

'Oh. Here.' I reached into my bag and pulled it out. I had brushed it before putting it in its own bag. It sat, like a piece of blonde roadkill, waiting to make some other person's head itch.

'Did you wash it?'

'Wash the wig?'

'Yes. It's unhygienic for somebody else to put it on without you washing it first.''It's made of cheaper synthetic fibres than a cut-price Barbie's. I a.s.sumed it would basically melt in a washing-machine.'

'If it's not in suitable condition for a future staff member to wear, I'm going to have to charge you for a replacement.'