‘So I grab the bottle and go into the road where Mother’s waiting. She’s just a ray of sunshine, calling out to the neighbours and waving as we load up the old Morris Minor. She’s taken it into her head that she wants to go to Thurlestone and she cruises really slowly past a huge house looking out over the arch in the bay. She points, just like she always does when we go there, and says, “There, pumpkin, is my favourite house in the whole world. Imagine waking up to that view. One day, pumpkin, one day. I’d give anything to live there.” ‘

I stopped speaking for a moment. Does my mother ever remember saying that? Does she ever turn that wish over in her mind?

‘Anyway, we get out of the car and start walking down to the beach, across the golf course, and the links are really crowded, balls flying everywhere. All the golfers are yelling, “Fore!” and she covers my head and giggles as we duck down together. Then she’s walking ahead of me because I begin to ramble, looking in rabbit holes, turning over stones, looking for lost golf balls. The sun’s hot and I feel brilliant. My mother’s happy as a sandboy, I’m going to go swimming and then I’ll eat as much as I want, food I really like. I begin to flip the bottle in my hands. Y’know, just end over end, even though it’s all slippery with sweat. I begin to throw it a little higher and then, as my mother disappears into the dunes, I fling it up into the air, even though the lemonade will fizz out when it’s opened. I throw it up as high as I can, and then I look for it. Big mistake. The sun’s at its highest, absolutely dazzling. I’m blinded by it and begin to reel about, arms flailing, as the bottle falls. When it lands it knocks me senseless.’

Sonja snorted with laughter, even though it was a picture of my younger self being damaged. I guffawed. It took my mother five minutes to realise that I wasn’t behind her. When she came back to get me she found I was knocked out and there was blood everywhere. We spent the afternoon in Plymouth’s casualty ward, with me being given eight stitches. But as my mother said, rather brightly given she’d been at the wine in the ladies’ room, at least we had enough to eat while we were waiting.’

Sonja grinned as I thought that my mother might have been annoyed that we lost the deposit on the smashed bottle.

‘More stories,’ Sonja said.

‘No, no more.’ I smiled, then, to take the sting out of the words. ‘I’m tired.’

‘OK. Thanks. You spoke really well.’ Sonja pushed herself out of her Indian pose and kissed my cheek. ‘Coming to bed?’

‘In a minute.’ I picked up my book and pretended to read until she closed the door.

When she’d gone, I dropped the book on the sofa, lowered my chin to my scarred, unnatural chest and thought. Unknown to Sonja, whenever I told that story I thought of another. I didn’t know why it reminded me, maybe because when I was a boy I always thought my mother was so self-assured, beautiful and … proud, almost. But I knew that when I was six months old my mother went to Plymouth Central and caught a train to Bristol Temple Meads to look for my father, my Celtic, feckless, handsome father. Her husband. She went to the department store on Park Street where she’d found out he worked, and begged him to come back. She begged, my mother. My mother begged. And he said, ‘No.’ He stood in the shadow of the Victorian buildings on Park Street — where I have since built decks, built bridges — and he said no. I’ve never met him but I have seen photographs and I can imagine him forming the word ‘No’, spitting it out on the pavement.