He has since said that, like my mother, he noticed the mad brightness, the openness of my eyes, roving everywhere, rarely blinking. He noticed that my hands moved all the time, rubbing, fingering, fidgeting. I was compensating for my hearing, trying to learn as much about the world as I could through my other senses. He also said that when he heard the first word I spoke, ‘Swimming’, his breath was squeezed once more by a constricting chest. Harry has a heart of gold, a huge heart, but even he didn’t have heart enough to tell me then that I would never swim again.

The Elemental office is a grey, cheerless unit in a light-industrial area of Bedminster. A couple of months ago Ian and I received a letter from the Department of Education and Employment asking if we would take on an apprentice as part of some scheme to reduce unemployment -if we took on a young, long-term unemployed person and trained them, they would be paid a trifling weekly sum by the DEE. ‘What d’you think?’ I asked Ian, handing him the letter.

He read it and wrinkled his nose. ‘I dunno. What can we teach them?’

‘The rudiments, I guess. Teach them how to get up for a reason?’

‘You decide.’ He put the letter on the desk and dangled his truck keys from finger and thumb. ‘Remember you’ve got to collect the order from Robbins.’

‘Yeah. D’you need anything?’

‘No. I’ll catch you later.’ And off he went, to wrestle with iron in the firelit cave of his workshop.

That night I asked Sonja what she thought of the scheme. She was cooking, moving around the Aga, slicing onions, skimming the purple scum from a pan of simmering red kidney beans. She was making her chilli con carne, a dish hot enough to make even the most spice-jaded palate extremely thoughtful.

‘I think it’s great’ she said, wiping away onion-induced tears with the hem of her T-shirt. A took one on about a year ago and she did really well. She’s working in Planet Earth now and earning three times as much.’

I picked up my beer and sluiced it round the bottle until froth formed. ‘You didn’t tell me.’

‘You didn’t ask.’ Sonja moved away to the Aga and threw chunks of pork into red-hot fat, jumping back as it spat at her.

A flash of anger sizzled through me. Well, good Christ, I can’t come home and ask every conceivable question on the off-chance that it’s happened. ‘Hi, were you mugged today?’

‘Was there a multiple pile-up outside the shop?’

‘Has there been an earthquake in Japan?’

‘Who is the Blind Man?’

‘So, you think we should do it? Take on one of these people?’ I asked.

She brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘Yes, I do. I mean, there’s the problem of the pay — you get them for nothing and they get something like fifty quid a week, which seems like exploitation to me. After all, it’s only a fiver more than they’d get for lying in bed all day. But, but … Elaine did well out of it’