Jack didn’t appear to have heard her. He had his chin down and was tugging at the front of his T-shirt as if he was checking the fabric for strength.

Patrick cleared his throat. “Ellen asked you a question, mate.”

“No she didn’t.”

“Yes, she did. She asked if you liked sausages. You love sausages, don’t you!”

Jack shrugged his shoulders away from his father’s hands. “I don’t love sausages, actually, Dad. Also, she didn’t ask if I liked sausages. She said, I’m hoping you like sausage sandwiches. That’s not a question. It’s like a sentence. See? She said, I’m hoping you like sausage.”

“OK, well…” began Ellen.

“I love pizza. You said I could order a pizza tonight.”

“I said maybe we’d order a pizza tonight, but if Ellen has made sausage sandwiches for you, then that’s what you’re having.” Patrick gave Jack a stern, paternal and somewhat panicky look.

“I haven’t actually made them yet,” Ellen hastened to say. “You can have pizza, Jack, if that’s what you prefer, of course you can.”

“Yeah. Thanks, that’s what I’d prefer.” Jack sighed gustily, as if someone was finally talking sense. “So, can I watch my DVD now?”

“Jack. Please. You don’t need to watch your DVD straightaway. That’s not good manners.”

Ellen saw that Patrick’s cheeks were sucked in as if he was clenching his jaw. He was desperate for Jack to make a good impression on her. Her own nerves vanished.

“It’s all right,” she said to Jack. “My DVD player isn’t working, but you can watch it on my laptop if that’s OK.”

“Yeah, that’s OK,” said Jack kindly. “I can work your laptop.” For the first time he tilted his head up to look at her properly.

“You must be disappointed about your friend being sick,” she said to him.

“Yeah,” he said impatiently. “Hey, will you please hypnotize me? Also, could you teach me how to hypnotize my friends? Like, so they do whatever I command? That would be so cool! They could be my slaves.”

“That’s sort of unethical,” said Ellen.

“What?”

“OK, let’s get that DVD on.” Patrick clapped his hands together.

“You’re acting really weird, Dad.” Jack frowned.

Patrick gave Ellen a self-conscious grin. “Weirder than usual, hey Jack?”

Jack shook his head gravely. “Seriously, Dad.”

They headed down the hallway and Jack stopped to touch a fingertip to the silver metallic polka dots on the orange wallpaper. He looked back up at Ellen. “This is a cool house.”

“Thank you.” She was so smitten she only just managed to stop herself from calling him “darling.”

Twenty minutes later Jack was sitting in Ellen’s living room with the laptop on his knees, headphones over his ears, his eyes fixed on the flickering images on the screen and his big chunky sneakers up on Ellen’s beautifully restored retro coffee table.

Patrick didn’t tell him to take his feet off the table, and Ellen didn’t know how to ask him to take his feet down without sounding like an evil stepmother. What did a few scuff marks matter?

“Well, he’s gorgeous,” she told Patrick when they were sitting at the dining room table. She had laid out a platter of sourdough bread and dips and big green olives. They could see the top of Jack’s head where he sat watching his DVD through the dining room door. She lowered her voice slightly even though he obviously couldn’t hear them.

“He has his moments,” said Patrick. He cleared his throat and smiled at her. “You’re the first woman I’ve introduced him to since his mother died.”

“Well, that’s an honor: But wait, didn’t you introduce him to Saskia? I mean, you said you lived together for a couple of years. So she must have lived with Jack too.”

She hadn’t thought about that before. Saskia had known Patrick’s little boy as well.

Patrick’s nostrils twitched as if he’d just smelled something unpleasant. He spat an olive stone out into the palm of his hand. “I don’t count her.”

Ellen was unsettled. He couldn’t just pretend Saskia had never existed. He must have loved her once, in the beginning. And Ellen was not the first woman he’d introduced to his son. That was factually incorrect. She didn’t like that.

“How old was Jack when Saskia lived with you?”

“He was a toddler, I guess.”

“And did they … get on? Was he upset when she left?”

“He doesn’t even remember her,” said Patrick dismissively, which didn’t answer her question at all. His eyes lost their focus on her, and he suddenly called out, “Jack! Get your feet off the table!”

How could he see that Jack had his feet on the table from here? Or had he noticed before and not bothered to say anything?

“Excuse me.” Patrick stood up and went into the other room.

When he came back he was all set for a new subject. “So, how was your day today? You had a couple of clients, you said. Were they good, ah, sessions?”

If she knew him better she would have said, I haven’t finished talking about Saskia and Jack, but she was always struggling to contain her possibly voyeuristic interest in his ex-girlfriend. After all, he didn’t seem to want to know anything about her ex-partners.