I hadn’t noticed it until now but it had become very warm in the cinema. There was no air conditioning and although they’d left the door open at the back, the flow of air was sluggish. I felt the one hundred people pressing in on me and heard their collective breathing. In the half-darkness, the blind woman on the stage seemed almost threatening. I remembered going to pantomimes when I was a boy and living in terror that I would be chosen by one of the actors for a sing-song or a bit of fun on stage. I felt the same way now. My father had died young. I hoped with every fibre of my being that he wasn’t going to show up next – although he’d never taken that much interest in me when he was alive.

‘Anne?’ Elizabeth scanned the audience sightlessly.

Sid reached out to her. ‘Do you mean Anne Cleary?’

‘Yes.’

‘Second row. Just to your left.’

Elizabeth tilted her head in that direction. ‘There’s someone called William. He was very close to you. Was he your son?’

I looked at Anne, three seats away, and my heart went out to her. All the blood had drained out of her face. She was in a state of shock. ‘Please . . .’ She didn’t want Elizabeth to continue.

‘William was very troubled and he made a terrible decision. He was very young when he left you. And he knows how sad you are. He caused you pain. He wants you to forgive him. He died—’

‘He died of an overdose while he was at university.’ Anne’s voice cut in, supplying the information, perhaps trying to short-circuit this before it went any further. All around her, the audience had become very still, uncomfortable to be witnessing this personal tragedy.

‘Yes . . .’ Elizabeth nodded slowly, her gaunt face full of compassion.

‘He was an addict. He didn’t know what he was doing.’ Anne’s voice cracked. She hadn’t mentioned her son when we’d had dinner the night before, although she had said she had a daughter living in London. Even as we had laughed together it had struck me that there was an air of sadness about her, a sense of something unsaid. I hated what was happening to her now. It was horrible and unfair.

‘Don’t be sad, Anne,’ Elizabeth said from the stage. ‘There is no sadness on the other side of the mirror. He’s left all that behind him.’

‘That may be true.’ Anne stood up. ‘But he’s left me and his family behind him too and the pain has never gone . . . not for us.’ She had said enough. I saw her make the decision. Breathing heavily, she pushed her way to the end of the row, passing close to Hawthorne and myself, and without looking back left the cinema.