‘It was one moment . . . watching a woman who’d just had her baby, everything fine, no probs, everyone laughing and congratulating, and she started to haemorrhage . . . and it was panic – controlled panic but the whole room changed, the whole . . . everything. The dad was crying, doctors came out the walls, bells went off . . . and it was sorted, really, really quickly, they stopped it, she was OK, they’d got a theatre alerted in case but it was all right. Only I thought – if it hadn’t been and if it had been me in charge? What got to me was the responsibility, you know? The pressure of that – never mind if you know what to do . . . it shook me up. I had a couple of days out, said I had a stomach bug . . . so what kind of a wuss am I?’

‘No kind, Sambo. The point is, you hit the wall early on . . . and maybe you’d have climbed over it.’

‘I didn’t want to.’

‘Exactly. So, you haven’t failed – you tried and it didn’t work out, it wasn’t for you and you didn’t wait three years to learn that. It’s fine. And I bet your mother said exactly the same.’

He nodded.

‘So. Look, Sam, there’s no rush and no point in going into the wrong career because you think you’ve got to make a quick decision. You can get a job and work on things while you do it. What does Rosie think?’

He could tell everything from the boy’s face. Sam looked like a ten-year-old again, discovering his name had been left off the first cricket 11 list.

He looked down but not quickly enough for Simon to miss the tears in his eyes, controlled, not falling, but visible.

‘OK – suggestion. I was about to cook a steak when you arrived and I’m very hungry, so I’m going ahead with that, you say you’ve eaten but you can either stay in here or come in there and watch MasterChef. You can talk or not, whatever, I’m not going to probe.’

He got up and went into the kitchen without waiting for a reply and put Dave Brubeck on low. Then he got on with his cooking.

Sam did not join him until it was almost done, mushrooms and tomatoes ready, but glancing through, Simon saw that he was at the window. Everyone who came here went to the window, the long view of the close drew them, caught them up in itself and worked its own magic. Whatever he decided about buying somewhere else, he knew the one thing to hold him back would be this.

He had started to eat when Sam wandered through. Simon pointed to the coffee machine.

‘Another? Make one for me too.’

‘Better not. Mum isn’t on call but you never know, she might have to go somewhere in the middle of the night even so.’