I stared at the kitchen table. ‘No. I’ve given up on all that. I wasn’t any good at it.’

She pinched the bridge of her nose, and then looked at me sadly. ‘I wish you could see yourself the way I see you, love. You’re so hard on yourself all the time. You’ve got so much talent. I just wish you had a bit more self-belief. You’ve got it in you to do great things, I know you have. But you give up too easily.’

I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

Mum kept going. ‘I’m not talking about making millions of pounds or being world famous. I’m talking about doing something that makes you happy, that makes other people happy. Leading a good life.’

I said nothing again, but inside me, everything was churning and whirring. I felt we were suddenly on the cusp of talking about something we hadn’t properly talked about ever at that point: Dad.

He was on my mind already that day because I’d spotted something online about his new play, which was opening soon in New York. And now I could feel it all boiling up in my chest: the years of us avoiding the subject, the anger I felt at him leaving, at never making the slightest effort to get in touch.

‘I don’t know …’ I began. I could feel the words gathering pace in my head, and before I could decide whether I really wanted to say them, they were spilling out of me. ‘Maybe if Dad had stuck around, he might have rubbed off on me a bit more. I might have had a bit more ambition, I might have learned from him. I might have actually achieved something.’

Mum looked down at the table and rubbed the back of her neck. I couldn’t see the expression on her face.

‘But I guess there was something wrong with me,’ I added. ‘Or with us. We weren’t enough for him, in the end.’

She looked up at me then, her forehead wrinkled. ‘Have you ever considered that it might be a good thing that your father left?’ she said softly. ‘That maybe it’s better he didn’t rub off on you? That life might have been worse if he’d stuck around?’

‘I don’t see how life could be any worse,’ I muttered. And in eight days’ time, the universe would show me.

Mum sighed heavily. ‘When you were growing up, I always tried not to bad-mouth your father in front of you, because no matter what he’d done, he was still your father. But the truth is, Ben, he was a shit.’