I spent the first month of our courtship furiously writing, albeit only to impress Julia. An experimental, fragmentary novel, heavily influenced by Raymond Queneau, whom I was reading at the time, about a family that thought they were alive but in fact were not. I got 20,000 words down, which I left on her desk one afternoon before going and getting drunk at the nearest pub. Julia didn’t read it in my presence, nor even mention it for some time, but eventually, when we were out for dinner (that was mainly what we did in those days), she took off her glasses, very businesslike, and said: ‘That manuscript of yours. It’s a good premise. But completely derivative. Sort of limply so, to tell you the truth. You don’t mind me saying that, do you?’ She rammed her fork into her food and chewed merrily. ‘I don’t think you’re a writer, Owen. I’m sure you could be if you put lots of time and effort into it. But not in terms of natural talent …’ She took another bite of whatever it was: lamb, beef. ‘This meat is so tender!’

Firstly, I felt a childish pang of embarrassment, humiliation. I felt myself blush. What an idiot, with my derivative French-inspired absurdist nonsense! And then the relief came: Oh, thank god, now I don’t have to write the bloody thing! ‘You couldn’t make a publisher money, Owen,’ Julia said, smiling affectionately at me. ‘But you’re an absolute darling for trying your hand at it. I will tuck this manuscript away and treat it as a love-letter. You are the first man to write me a proper literary love-letter! I won’t forget it.’

And she didn’t.

Did Papa ever write Mother a love-letter, I wondered. I have found scraps of poems, birthday cards. Mother wasn’t much good at birthday cards. ‘Dear O-yo, Happy Birthday, Love Mother’. I found: ‘Sorry about last night etc love Jo x’ on the back of an envelope. I found ‘his pretty ears in sleep; his straw-coloured hair; his tulip mouth’ in her handwriting but it is torn off something else, something bigger, something I won’t ever read the whole of.

Did Papa ever write Mother a love-letter?

Did Mother ever write one?

Did they love each other?

PADDY COW—1968

I remember, Ornella, all the different driveways from this time. The tree-roots and tyre troughs of the Parishes’ dangerously steep driveway, Papa zig-zagging left to right in first gear. Arriving safely in their garage required acceleration and a kind of mad confidence. In wet weather, the wheels spun.