“I’d have preferred a walk in the park, actually. I was heading to St. James’s Park when the rain began again. I generally like to do my thinking out of doors. I’m a countryman at heart and if ever there’re thoughts to be had or decisions to be made, I always try to get myself outside to think them or to make them. A proper tramp in the air clears the head, I find. And the heart as well. It makes the rights and wrongs of life — the yes’s and the no’s — easier to see.”

“Easier to see,” she said. “But not to deal with. Not for me, at least. I can’t say yes just because people want me to, no matter how right it may be to do so.”

He directed his gaze back to the cartoon. He rolled the museum plan tighter in his hands. “Nor can I always,” he said. “Which is why I head out for a tramp in the air. I was set on feeding the sparrows from the bridge in St. James’s, watching them peck at my palm and letting every problem find its solution from there.” He shrugged and smiled sadly. “But then there was the rain.”

“So you came here. And saw there was no St. Joseph.”

He reached for his trilby and set it on his head. The brim cast a triangular shadow on his face. “And you, I imagine, saw the Infant.”

“Yes.” Deborah forced her lips into a brief, tight smile. She looked about her, as if she too had belongings to gather in preparation for leaving.

“Tell me, is it an infant you want or one that died or one you’d like to be rid of?”

“Be rid—”

Swiftly, he lifted his hand. “One that you want,” he said. “I’m sorry. I should have seen that. I should have recognised the longing. Dear God in heaven, why are men such fools?”

“He wants us to adopt. I want my child— his child — a family that’s real, one that we create, not one that we apply for. He’s brought the papers home. They’re sitting on his desk. All I have to do is fill out my part and sign my name, but I find that I just can’t do it. It wouldn’t be mine, I tell him. It wouldn’t come from me. It wouldn’t come from us. I couldn’t love it the same way if it wasn’t mine.”