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of the family, which couldn’t be Angie or Pip in Australia, or Angie’s brothers who were retired or point-blank refused, and all their kids had families of their own – yes, all of them, Rosie was delighted to learn. In short, Lilian needed to be cared for and put in a home, and her shop and the attached house needed to be sorted out and put on the market and sold to pay for the aforementioned home. And was there a single unemployed nurse in the family?
    ‘I’m not single, I’m not unemployed and I’m not a nurse, I’m an auxiliary nurse,’ Rosie had retorted. ‘Apart from that, spot on.’
    ‘So,’ said Rosie to Gerard, ‘here are the reasons I can’t go. And you have to listen to all of them and not just say, “You’re being very selfish, Rosemary,” hundreds of times like everybody else has.’
    ‘Hmm,’ said Gerard, trying to pretend to be listening.
    ‘Number one, I live here, and I’m looking for a new job of my own.
    ‘Number two, summer is in full swing and I don’t want to miss lots of cool outdoor stuff.
    ‘Number three, I don’t know anything about running a shop or selling a shop or any kind of business at all.
    ‘Number four, if I wanted to be an unpaid nurse I’d still be doing my old job, ha ha ha.
    ‘Number five, I don’t even know this woman. What if she has dementia and starts knocking me around?
    ‘Number six, she’s Angie’s aunt. She should do it, I’ve only met Lilian a couple of times.
    ‘Number seven. I don’t want to. I’m not sure that’s going to cut it. Anyway. Lots of good reasons that don’t make me a really selfish person.’
    ‘You forgot number eight, me,’ said Gerard, who had nearly finished his ice-cream cone and was looking thoughtfully at the van.
    ‘No I didn’t,’ said Rosie. ‘But you, I figure, could look after yourself for a few weeks.’
    In fact, though she wouldn’t have admitted it under torture, Rosie had kind of thought, given that Gerard had come straight from his mum’s house to their own flat and seemed to treat it in very much the same way, that one positive thing might come out of this: a few weeks of doing his own laundryand paying the bills himself might be good for him. Angie told her off all the time for babying him, which was hilarious, because Angie babied Pip so much she’d actually moved right across the world to work as his unpaid skivvy, whereas Rosie sometimes felt lucky if Angie managed to remember her birthday. That would have been the only positive side of such an arrangement. If she was going to go. Which she wasn’t.
    ‘So what did she say to that? To your list?’
    They were walking along the South Bank together, clutching their ice creams and flying saucers – Gerard had explained he needed another one because he didn’t get a flake first time round – and looking at the artists and the people out promenading, riding bikes and pushing buggies. On the riverbank in London, Rosie leaned against the railings over the Thames. Boatloads of tourists were going up and down, taking snaps. The view was incredible: the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, all the way round the curve of the river to St Paul’s Cathedral. Bathed in golden high-summer light, the city was stunningly beautiful, full of young families enjoying the day; long-limbed young couples in matching sunglasses heading towards art galleries; happy groups of Italian teenagers whacking each other with their rucksacks. Rosie felt so happy to be a part of it; to be a tiny cog in the buzzing, brilliant wheel of their city.
    ‘Well …’ said Rosie.
    Gerard sighed. ‘Oh, come on. You’re not being soft?’
    ‘Well, it is family …’
    ‘Did Angie kick your arse?’
    ‘It’s not about being soft,’ said Rosie. ‘It’s about … well. I’m only agency at the moment. And it’s family.’
    ‘Hasn’t she got any kids of her own that can do it?’ said Gerard. ‘It’s not very fair that it’s you, you don’t even know her.’
    ‘I know,