‘Yes, but only if you stay here too,’ Matty said, and his bottom lip trembled.

‘Then I will,’ Rafael said. ‘But you know, you and your mama look as tired as each other. Why don’t you pop under the blankets on one side of your mama’s bed? Your mama can sleep on the other side and I’ll sleep by the fire.’

‘Why can’t you and mama sleep in the bed while I sleep by the fire?’ Matty whispered but he was losing force. He was drooping as they watched.

‘It wouldn’t be dignified,’ Rafael said. ‘You know Aunt Laura says you and I need to learn to be dignified.’

‘It’s not dignified to sleep in the same bed as my mama?’

‘For you, yes. For me, no.’

‘Okay,’ Matty said, caving in with an alacrity born of need. ‘Can I go to bed now?’

And an hour later she was in bed with her son.

It felt like a weird and spacey dream. She lay in her big double bed and listened to him. Her son was breathing.

No big deal. To listen to a child breathe…

How could she go to sleep? She’d left the blind open and the moon was shining over her little vegetable garden, into the window, washing over her little son’s face.

Normally she blocked the moon out. She had a single woman’s need for security-privacy-so the blind went down every night.

There was no way the blind was coming down this night. She lay and watched Matty’s chest rise and fall, his small face intent even in sleep, the way his lashes curled, the way his fingers pressed into his cheek…

She could see his father. She could see the de Boutaine side. But she could also see little things about herself. She had funny quirky eyebrows, too thick for beauty. Whenever she had a haircut, the hairdresser tut-tutted and thinned them out.

Here were those same thick brows.