So … he had his bath as I sat and sipped whisky by the fire. (I’m not a total failure - I can make a fire in minutes in a centuries-damp cellar, in a swamp, in a swimming pool.) I thought of what I might say to him. In how much detail? With what language? He is, after all, only fourteen years old. John came in and sat on the floor, resting his back against a chair, his startling eyes closed. I leaned over and touched his cheek and his eyes drifted open. ‘Are you tired, pumpkin?’ I signed.

He nodded.

‘Why don’t you go to bed and we can talk tomorrow?’

He shook his head wearily. ‘I’ll be OK. You just talk.

Answer the question I asked. I’ll watch you.’

I sighed. ‘He just left, John. When you were being born he left. I was in hospital so I didn’t see him go. He met another woman he wanted to be with rather than me. That’s all.’

‘That can’t be all. It can’t be.’

No, you’re right, pumpkin, it’s not. But how much do I say? ‘Well, in a way it is. One day he was there and then he wasn’t.’ I really didn’t want to think about this.

‘Have you seen him? Since then, I mean. Since you were in hospital. Since I was born.’

‘No.’

John stared at the squat orange-blue flames jigging in the down-draught, drew his dressing-gown closer. Touched the lemonade scar in his black hair. ‘Do you miss him?’

‘Yes. All the time.’

‘But … but that’s fourteen years. Can you keep on missing?’

‘Yes.’

‘I miss him too. I didn’t even know him and I miss him. When we were in Tommy’s I thought,’ and he tugged the tasselled cord of his dressing-gown, ‘I thought he might, maybe, he might visit or write or something.’ He looked at me with shadowed, exhausted eyes, which had already seen too much. ‘Did he write?’ His voice had cracked and squeaked.

‘No, he didn’t. John - your voice is breaking.’

January 1973

When I told John last night that his voice was breaking he looked at me as if I’d wounded him. He shut his eyes and curled into a ball. I lay next to him by the fire and held him until eventually he slept, then I fetched some blankets and we both slept in front of the fire. I couldn’t carry him upstairs. I can support him when he hurts but I can’t carry him. I don’t think his withdrawal was about his father. It was about something else and I don’t know what it is. Soon he’ll leave me. In a few weeks he goes to the special school where they will help him communicate with the world. There he will be like the other deaf. But of course he won’t be, will he? He’s six feet two and has a body like St Sebastian’s, but without the celestial following.

I have to tell him about his father. What to tell? It’s been years now and I can no longer muster enough emotion to retell the events as they should be told. And what do I mean by that? As they should be told? There are many versions of any event. The left, the leaver, the deserter, the bereft. The indifferent.