With a sigh, Abbott plonked himself back down, and they sat for a while, Abbott wondering if another nip would help him make sense of his father’s excuses. Help him to accept them. It wasn’t that, though. What he needed was to find forgiveness in his heart; he needed to remember that although the guy opposite had not been the best father, he in turn had not been the best son, and he thought of all those times that his father had made excuses for him, turned up at the police station when he was in trouble, tried his best to reassure him that Chris’s death was not his fault, and how he, the young and youthful Abbott, had reacted, which was to give his father years and years of trouble, ending in that remand-home spell. The death of Chris had sent them all off the rails one way or another. There was no wondering who’d got it worst. From four Abbott family members there were only two left, and as they sat in this overheated room in a care home in Burton-upon-Trent the last thing they needed to do was despise one another.

It was as though his father had read his thoughts. ‘I’m sorry, son,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry, too, Dad.’

They remained in silence for a while. A silence you might even have said was companionable, until Abbott almost regretfully broke it. ‘I’m going to have to go, Dad,’ he said.

‘You’ll be coming back next week, will you?’

He looked at the old man, the reality of it all coming crashing back in on him. ‘Yes. Next week, as usual,’ and he stood. His emotions roiled. He turned to go, just as his dad said, ‘He came to see me, you know.’

‘Who came to see you? The kidnapper?’ Abbott tried to recall the guy’s name. ‘Jason Scutter? Him?’

‘No, not him. They sent him to jail. I’m talking about the bloke who ran into Chris. Mr Smith was his name. Driving a Rover. Devastated he was. He sat in our front room in front of your mother and me, and he cried his heart out for what he’d done. He said that even though it weren’t his fault he could never forgive himself for what he’d done. I don’t think I’ve ever felt more sorry for someone in me life than I did at that moment.’

Abbott knew. He knew that it didn’t matter whether or not you were responsible, where the fault lay; that even when it wasn’t your fault you still felt like it was, you still played it out in your head and made it end differently, wondered what you could have done.

‘He said something else an’ all.’

‘What’s that then, Dad?’

‘He said he saw the bloke in his car, the nonce, the one you just said.’