‘Him, of course.’

‘Great, oh, great — a blind man. Has it occurred to you that he may not even know about you? That Sonja may not have told him she’s married?’ It hadn’t. ‘What’s got into you? A week ago I would have said you were the mildest of men. Positively timid. You’d better shape up.’

‘It’s just—’ I stopped. What was it? ‘It’s just that nothing’s right. Nothing works. I can’t explain.’

He took the cigarette from my fingers and lit it, blowing smoke, gave it back to me. 'Is it this Sonja business? Is that it? I don’t get it - why don’t you ask her about it? Get it out in the open? It’s obvious something’s going on. You can’t just go around hitting people. There are other ways of dealing with it.’

I smiled, because I remembered Merboy sitting on a kitchen stool looking sceptical as a policeman told him the same thing.

‘It’s not funny,’ said Ian.

‘Right. Sorry. It’s not just Sonja. It’s lots of things. I keep thinking about my father. I don’t know why. And my mother and what she used to be like. What used to be like. When I was a boy. I can’t explain. There’s a word … like I’m undoing?’

‘Unravelling?’

‘That’s it. When I was a boy I wasn’t like this, I was different. Different from the way I am now. But I think it would be OK, I think it would all be OK if me and Sonja were OK.’

‘Look, I know you’ve been unhappy, I know you’re angry but I can’t see what you’re doing to change things. I mean, this just sounds like a bloody mid-life crisis or something. Of course you’re not the same as when you were a boy. Why would you want to be? Look at it this way: you’ve been told that you might be able to hear again, that you might be able to swim again. This should be a great time for you. You should be ecstatic, jubilant, exhilarated. You should be bloody radiant. Instead of which you’re a miserable git. ‘

I looked at his grave, dark face. ‘Do you like Sonja?’

He frowned. ‘Do I like her?’ He shrugged. ‘I suppose I like what I know. I’ve known her for a long time but I don’t feel I really know her.’

‘I’m beginning to think I don’t either.’

I dabbed the graze on my cheek, thinking that I didn’t talk to Sonja like this. Wished I knew what Ian’s voice was like.

I always imagined it would sound like the blackened butter Sonja’s mother swilled in her saucepans.

On the New Year’s Eve after we left Tommy’s, when we were sitting in our new, empty home, my mother told me that my voice was breaking and I thought I’d misread her lips.

‘What?’

‘Your voice is breaking.’

My voice was breaking? Was it in fragments in my mouth? Could she see the fragments rolling against my teeth? If she could, what did they look like?