"Don't even think about it."

"Too late. The seed has been sown. It's years since I played."

"And you were terrible even then."

"Get on. I was great."

They both thought of the first time he had sung to her.

"That train was a stroke of luck," he said.

"And which train would that be?" she asked coyly.

"That would be both of them."

"Is the right answer."

That now beatified journey of her youth on the Paris-to-Rome sleeper had been Hitchcockian in its potential for menace. Nineteen years old, alone in Europe and picking her way in the dark over twisted heaps of travel-weary bodies and scuffed rucksacks, she had almost been able to hear the soundtrack. It had been no surprise at all when the Moroccan guy leaning against a carriage partition had swung his pitted oily face in her own and blocked her path with his reeking body.

"Excuse me?"

"Beer? Spirit? Drink with me?" he'd slurred, waving a bottle at her. "Pretty girl." He had rubbed against her breast.

She could still remember the lack of effect her then seven-and-a-half-stone frame had against his hot, sweating bulk, but at least the struggle had caused enough commotion to wake the sleeper at her feet. And when that sleeper had stood up, the relief of seeing someone a good foot taller than her aggressor was immense. It might even have been love at first sight.

"You havin' a problem there?" His hair was sticking up in clumps for want of a good wash, but his brand of personal hygiene, or the lack of it, was immediately familiar. Student-based. Non-threatening. Welcome.

"Beer, lady? You want beer? Drink with me?"

"No, I don't think she does, mate," the sleeper had said, "and she's with me, okay?"

So her first date with Niall had been a trip to a railway loo at midnight, and he'd held the door for her while she tried her best not to make a sound or pee all over the floor. Then they'd returned to her carriage, sat together with their legs on their bags, smoking and talking and strumming until Turin, where they'd kissed on the platform and arranged to meet in Milan.

And that was it. It wasn't the pregnancy that broke the beautiful spell of the next two years, it was the abortion. She was twenty-one in the summer after her finals and Niall was twenty-four.

"I'm going mad," she'd told him two months after it was done. "I think our love was encapsulated in the baby and now we've chosen to get rid of that we've also got rid of ourselves."

"We're still here."

"No, we're not. We're in the medical wastebin with our baby. You're not, and I'm not, but we are."

There wasn't anywhere else they could go with that, so they'd walked away from their shared bedroom in a shared house and left everything, absolutely everything, behind.

Weird that it had taken another train to bring them home again, to another shared house, with other shared bedrooms. Except that he shared his bedroom with someone else now. Only at weekends, though. And they never referred to it. Ever. But it was okay. It really was okay.

She smiled at him again.

"What's on the other side of this?" he asked, tapping the solid stone. He knew those smiles and they usually meant trouble.

"The kitchen."

"Perfect. We'll knock through. I'll get my brother to draw up the plans for free, and Murphy can come and build it."

"Build what?"

"How about a sitting room people actually want to sit in."

"Don't you like the one we've got?" Emmy felt icy panic claw at her chest.

"I don't know. It's too cold to stay in there long enough to assess."

"Is it a disappointment here? Did you think it would be better than this? I wish it was the middle of summer-it's so beautiful here when it's hot and sunny. Give it a few weeks and-"

"God, Emmy, relax. It's just feckin' cold in the sitting room, that's all."

"Do you think I should get some heating put in? I know it's already nearly May but even if we don't stay until the winter, it might, you know, well, at least then we could-"

"Stop. Right now. Everything is fine, everyone's happy, we're all pinching ourselves at being lucky enough to ... you know." He put his hand to her hair and pulled a strand away from her face. "It's just colder inside than out, that's all."

Emmy changed the subject. "Did you say Murphy? You've got to be joking."

"Paddy Murphy's the man, builder par excellence."

"Except we'll have to use local tradesmen, or you won't get served at the pub."

"Good thinking."

"What are you doing in here, anyway? I thought Kat wanted you to hump furniture."

"I'll hump later. How're the kids?"

"See for yourself." Emmy gestured.

"Don't do smug."

"I'm not. But look, Asha's fine. She's completely forgotten about it. They make too much of it. She'd be fine if they just ignored it."

"That's great. Just don't forget that everyone has a different way, that's all."

There were a few words implicit in his comment. What he meant was "everyone has a different way from us." Emmy bristled with pleasure.

"It's all about diversion, isn't it? It's such an easy trick."

"Divert me, then."

Emmy didn't bother to take him up on it-she'd heard it all before. Sexual innuendo from Niall had very little to do with whether he was attracted to you.

The girls had freed the bicycle and were rubbing the cobwebs away, feeling its tires, emptying rubbish from its basket.

"Look at that. They say that one man's junk is-"

"Another man's treasure?"

Maya heard his voice and looked up. Niall blew her a kiss.

"You haven't been too hard on her, have you?" he asked accusingly.

Only he could suggest such a thing. Emmy knew that he knew she was sometimes too hard on Maya, that she leaned too hard, punished too hard, loved too hard.

"No."

"Go easy. It's new for us all."

"I know, but tell me it's not just me who thinks it's odd that Asha's got all the trappings of security she could wish for, and she can't say boo to a goose, and then there's Maya, who's been dragged up without a father, with a mother who lurches from one emotional crisis to the next..."

Niall put his hand in his old cord coat pocket to find his cigarettes, and shook his head. "That's not right, though, Em, is it?"

"It is."

"No, it's not."

"Why?"

"Well, for a start, we both know you think Maya's better off without a father."

"I do. I'm not ashamed of that."

"Nor should you be, but don't do all that 'dragged up without one' thing. Not to me, anyway." He was sailing close to the wind. "Because I know you think you have the more rounded child as a result-that given the choice you would actively advocate single parenthood."

"I do. I think it does you good to have the corners knocked off you at an early age."

"You don't have to be the child of a single parent for that to happen."

"I know, but you get less attention, and that has its benefits."

"Do you?"

"Maya does."

Niall didn't think so, but he didn't say so. "You'd hate to share her, wouldn't you?"

"You try it. It's bloody hard work."

"That's not in dispute, but c'mon, Maya is hardly deprived of stability, and what are your emotional crises? A couple of useless boyfriends? She's one of the lucky ones, and you know it."

He watched the girl climb over an old tractor seat and jump down the other side. He might be the only one who could get away with talking to Emmy like that but he also knew when to change tack. "But you're obviously doing something right."

Emmy nodded, accepting the compliment. She thought she was one of the lucky ones too. Single parenthood was what she would choose. It meant the accolade belonged entirely to her. Maya was her achievement. Her only achievement, maybe, but still all hers.

Niall shrugged. "I can't help it."

"Can't help what?"

"Being so proud of her."

You have no idea what hearing something like that does to me, Emmy thought. "Don't help it, then. You know how much you mean to her."

"I do now. She's already given me my pass to enter her room whenever I like." He produced a credit-card-sized piece of board with his name and a password on it. "No one else is going to have one, apparently. Not even you."

One of Maya's early paintings flashed up in Emmy's mind. My Family, it was called. Niall was in it, along with the goldfish and the hamster, and it had been on the fridge door for years. Emmy liked him playing Dad, but only because he knew things. For a start, he knew he was playing, and secondly he also knew the point at which she would do the Lioness thing and swipe him with her paw.

"Not that I'm going to be allowed to use it much," he said, putting the pass back in his pocket. "Not at weekends, anyway."

"What? Kat? She's not still got a thing about her, has she?"

"Don't be too hard on her, Em. She's just trying to find her feet. She's really keen to make this work, not just between her and me, but here."

"Or is she just putting up with us lot as a means of getting you?"

"What do you mean, getting me?"

"Keeping you, then."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Good. Don't."

"I won't. I don't help, though. I told her the reason I wasn't up for a kid just now was because I felt I already had one."

"She wants a baby?" Emmy's heart thumped a little.

"Not really. Only when she's pissed."

"That's ridiculous."

"Is it?"

"Well, you tell me."

"You're a bad girl sometimes, Emmy," Niall said, shaking his head at her. "Most of the time you're irresistibly lovely, but every now and again you're rotten to the core."

"Sorry. Anyway, you told her you already had one?"

"I told her I felt I did. It's true, you know it is. Maya feels like mine, even if she isn't."

"She certainly behaves as if she's yours sometimes."

"Swears like a trooper, smokes herself half to death."