It’s not Mom,’ he added quickly, but Bobby had not allowed himself to think it was.

His heart sank nonetheless, and he muttered, ‘Gladys,’ thinking his father thought the prospect of helping her roll out biscuits was a treat.

‘No,’ said his dad. ‘Not Gladys. You’ll see.’

When they got back to the apartment, his father whistled when he opened the door, and called out, ‘Hey ho, we’re here.’ He sounded better than he had for ages. Bobby went with him through the corridor to the kitchen, where Gladys was standing at the stove. Only it wasn’t Gladys: this woman was as black as Gladys, but much younger. She wasn’t fat at all, he thought to himself, though she had a large bosom beneath her grey sweater. Her skirt was short, and he could see her legs – Gladys had always hid hers in long white cotton shifts and the ubiquitous apron the size of a tent. This woman had youthful pretty features, and she looked directly at him before his father had said a word.

‘This is Bobby,’ his father said hopefully.

She nodded. Then she slapped her cheeks with both hands. ‘Why, ain’t you the cutest little boy I ever done seen,’ she exclaimed.

His grandmother had called him cute once, and his brother Mike had never let him forget it. But right now he didn’t care what Mike would think, and he smiled shyly at this woman. She smiled back and her white teeth gleamed, though looking up at her mouth Bobby could see the gold glitter of several fillings.

She turned to his father and said, ‘Maybe you need to find something in your study, Mr Danziger.’ For a moment, his father looked puzzled. Then he took the hint and left the room.

The woman smiled again at Bobby and said, ‘Come here, honey, and let me take a look at you.’

He took a small step towards the stove and she leaned down until her face was almost level with his. Suddenly he wanted to run to her, but he hesitated. When he tried to hug Gladys she usually shooed him away. ‘Child, don’t be bothering me,’ was her automatic response.

But this woman was holding her arms wide open in an unmistakable signal. He waited just the same. For he was old enough, perhaps experienced enough even in his young years, to sense that he simply could not bear being let down again.

Then she said, ‘Come here, baby,’ and the next thing he knew he was in her arms. They were warm and comforting, but he began to cry anyway. The tears he shed may have been for his mother – yes, almost certainly – but they were also for the despairing days he had been through since his mother had gone away. And tears from sheer relief at this embrace, the first sign that maybe life didn’t need to seem endless after all.

‘That’s all right,’ she was saying into his ear, and he felt his tears streaked along her cheek. ‘You just cry as much as you need to. I ain’t going nowhere. Vanetta and you are going to have us a good time together. Just you wait and see.’

III

THE COFFEE SHOP was a vast tiled room on the ground floor of the Marchese Building, an early brick-fronted skyscraper of twenty-odd floors that sat on Wacker Drive, a stone’s throw across the Chicago River from the pearl-veined stone of the Wrigley Building. This late in the afternoon the place was almost empty, and the waitress told him to take his pick of tables. He scanned the room for Duval, but saw only an elderly couple nursing cups of coffee, a family of tourists having Cokes, and an old black man with a beard reading in the far corner. Robert breathed a sigh of relief, glad to be there first.

He didn’t know what to expect, didn’t even have a good sense of what Duval looked like. The skinny awkward kid Robert had known must have filled out. Didn’t all convicts lift weights, grow muscle-bound? Presumably for protection – Robert knew prison life was violent, scarily so; even the most unrealistic television dramas showed a life of brute force and fear.