That gets Aubery to laugh a little around the filter of his cigarette. It's not a humorless, hollow laugh; but it's not particularly amused either. She'd done her homework and done it well, and Aubery's curious exactly how far she had gone. The impulse to ask if she'd read his father's books is there, but he doesn't act on it in the end, just shrugs and smokes some more.

"The symptom of an absentee father." Aubery's father had left England in the mid-90s, leaving his mother to fend for herself and her six year old son. "Couldn't be helped."