‘Yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘I hope so. It took me long enough to ask for help. I just hate the thought of her life being ruined and it being my fault.’

‘It won’t be your fault. Parents blame themselves too much for what happens to their children. There are lots of other factors in play. Heredity, the education they get, the people they meet, career choices. You haven’t any problem loving Amy, have you?’

‘No, that’s one thing I’ve never had to worry about.’

‘Then she’ll come through,’ I said.

Dodge, as I said, always finds a use for bits of wood and he’s highly creative in what he does with them. When he makes furniture, his basic raw materials are wooden pallets, but other scraps of timber are also pressed into service. He is a wonderfully inventive recycler and, though he sometimes has to buy new screws and nails, he regards paying for anything else as a failure on his part.

Though Dodge didn’t look me in the eye when I told him about Mary Griffin’s predicament, I could tell he was immediately enthused by the construction project. Everything in the house needed replacing. She hadn’t been insured and, though she might eventually get some compensation for the chaos her husband had wreaked, it was going to be a slow process. And she had no income, only a small amount of savings salted away in an account she’d managed to keep secret from Craig. In time, poverty might force her to sell the house and move somewhere smaller, but the charity was determined to prevent that from happening.

So, they helped her replace her shattered possessions, finding a cast-off sofa and some shelves, rugs, mattresses, and bedding. An old electric cooker was sourced, a just-about-working washing machine and a far-from-smart television. For the kitchen, pans, a toaster, and a kettle were unearthed from somewhere.

My first visit after removing the debris, I found that Mary Griffin had hardly started on making the house habitable again. Amy was still being looked after at the refuge, as she had been for some weeks. Mary didn’t want the little girl to see the destruction her father had wrought. But she herself didn’t seem to be capable of making the effort required to recreate her home. All the stuff delivered by the charity still lay where they had put it down. For Mary, the effort of moving it seemed too great.

I recognized how traumatized she was. And knew that I would have to hold her hand through every step of the reorganization process. That morning I arranged for a plumber and electrician to do the necessary work on the kitchen appliances and guided Mary in moving the piled-up furniture into the relevant rooms.

On top of the charity’s donations of furniture, Dodge had contributed stuff he’d already made, tables and chairs, whose finely sanded and oiled finish would never have betrayed their humble origin as pallets.

But his new project, on which he spent God knows how many hours, was a bed for Amy. Not quite full-size but big enough for her to think of it as grown-up.