Veronica McReedy is rich, comfortable, and old. She has no family, having divorced her husband many years ago, and her parents having died when she was a young teenager, during World War II. Well, she did have a baby, a very long time ago, but he was adopted, and she never saw him again. Eventually, she learned, from one of his adopted cousins, that he had died in a mountain climbing accident, in his forties. He had no children.
Except--she has found the box in which she stored some keepsakes, a locket with several strands of hair, and her diary notebooks, which she last wrote in during the war. And now she wonders, is she really sure? Would an adopted cousin really know, for sure, if her son had any offspring?
Patrick Fuller has just been dumped by his girlfriend, who is now living with a builder, and consequently has also lost his apartment, which her income had been essential for. He's working one day a week at Gav's bicycle shop, and his only other income is the dole. He's in a smaller, crappier apartment that Gav found him, not cooking healthy anymore like he did with Lynette, and even smoking marijuana again.
