Of course in the end I do find the house, slither down the icy lanes running like drips to the edge of the sea, and pull into the driveway. It is in darkness. I fumble for the light switch and see that the hallway is dusty, unused. There are no muddied boots, no umbrellas, no worn Barbours hanging off the back of a chair; in fact, no sign of life apart from the pile of mail put on the hall table by a neighbour. The light throws pale rectangles beyond the doors off the hall and behind them are rooms I lived in as a teenager. I’ve never been here alone before — always my mother has been waiting, smiling her twisted smile, reaching for a bottle and two glasses. I drop the bag and walk into the kitchen — so familiar. It’s never been changed since we moved in and now it’s a museum piece — a tribute to enamel and Bakelite, the pantry with tin-mesh eyes staring at me as I look around. I open it and find the expected cases of whisky and gin, pour myself a drink and walk through the house.

Being alone I see the house as if for the first time; the unfinished bathrooms with their swirling orange seventies’ wallpaper. My mother’s bedroom, furnished as a cell, with white walls and single bed, the teapot from Southdown Road its only ornament, the slashed brown velvet curtains hanging over the window. The guest rooms with their dimpled headboards and chrome towel rails, bulky gas fires squatting in the fireplaces -never used. I wander through the rooms wondering why my mother bought such a mansion, such a huge, always empty house. But I know why — she expected me to fill it with friends, to bring them every weekend to play with the basketball hoop screwed above the garage door, the footballs, the board games. Expected me to go down to the beach running with a pack of boys to play cricket, to mess about in the sand, to fly Harry’s kite. When I was young, when I lived in Noss Mayo, I’d appear in the summer evenings trailing a band of children, disturbing my mother’s reading, demanding a party, a picnic. And she would smile her lazy smile and stretch, before inviting them in and telling me to take them through to the garden, where we ran around yelling, pulling branches and hurling leathery quince apples at each other as she made sandwiches. Friends for a summer, for a day.

I never did bring anyone home from the school at Exeter.

My mother watched me until she saw me go through the doors of the school. I couldn’t see her but I knew she was watching, in the same way as she watched my back puckering and closing as I lay in the hospital bed in Tommy’s. I pulled at my uniform, unused to the feel of shirt collar, laced shoes, rough, heavy blazer. Around me there were other boys and girls, all with the same bright, mad eyes checking for every movement in the world. Fingers flew as they signed to each other, talking (we were to call it talking) about their holidays, their parents, their pets. I walked alone, trying to shrink, wishing I could be like other children. Some stared at me, at my scars, with the blank vacant face of the deaf, which animates suddenly when a friend or an idea approaches. I touched the Corona scar again and again, wishing I was back on that sunny, sandy lane with my whole mother walking ahead of me, hearing the cries of Tore!’ and smelling heather.