And so I am and I know it. I supervise the building of decks, I finger my scars, I grind my chisels to razor-like sharpness, I work in my basement workshop in the bowels of our house because I cannot survive and talk to Sonja at the same time. I have, after all, a finite number of resources. I can keep the money rolling in, can deal with waking and watching people’s lips, but I can’t do all this and love Sonja well at the same time.

Not long after I married Sonja I went to visit my mother and the two of us sat on the rackety old deck of the Thurlestone house and got drunk together; a departure from the norm -usually she was plastered when I arrived. We sat, rocking on our heels, crouching on the steps of the collapsing deck — this was before I became a deck-builder - a bottle of whisky between us, a storm lantern burning on the step so I could watch her lips move, her fingers sign.

‘That wasn’t the first bomb I ever heard,’ she said, pouring an inch of raw whisky into her glass. We hadn’t mentioned the bomb for years, crazy as that sounds. We’d ignored it, turned our backs to it, just as I had done on my thirteenth birthday. I sat very still, glass in hand, watching her.

My mother sighed, and rubbed her upper lip, where the damage had been the worst. ‘When I was a little girl, you know, six or seven years old, the raids would never stop. We’d hear the sirens, me and my mother, and go to the shelter down at the bottom of the garden. Plymouth was bombed every night, every bloody night. We’d go to the shelter and Ma would lie on top of me when the bombs were hitting. We had a lodger, because your grandfather was fighting in France and money was tight. She was only a girl, she must have been about sixteen, from the country, by which we meant Cornwall, a farm girl. A farm girl with a thin, pinched face. She worked in the munitions factory. I remember lying underneath my mother and looking at the girl all alone on a bench. She didn’t have anyone who loved her enough to lie on top of her. She always looked so scared.’ My mother poured another inch of whisky. ‘My grandparents lived on Southdown Road and their house took a direct hit but they weren’t there at the time. They’d been out walking and sheltered somewhere else. When we went round there was one wall left standing, the windows intact, the curtains still hanging. They were dark brown velvet and they had small holes in them where shrapnel had sliced through them. There was a mantelpiece, still upright, and on it there was an unbroken china teapot, unscathed. Merely rattled. I’ve got it on my mantel now.’

I didn’t know what to say so I poured myself another drink.