Marcus stepped up, half moved in, hell-bent on being nothing like his dad. Marcus to the rescue. Marcus getting on to the council so I could keep the house, getting the bills changed over, clearing out her stuff while I sat on the back step, chain-smoking and staring at the plowed fields. Marcus painting, fixing shelves, and buying plants. Marcus suggesting holidays. Traveling. Antidepressants. Once, he even suggested a baby. Marcus at a loss, because he had got what he had wanted, but it wasn’t supposed to be like this. Me the problem in Marcus’s life, the thing that needed to come right. Sympathy giving way to anger, giving way to coldness because I couldn’t reward him for his efforts. Because everything else was going so well: managing some smaller projects for Darren, business booming, enough money coming in that he bought a terraced house in Swindon, renovated and sold it on at a profit. Rinse and repeat, Andy, rinse and repeat!

I worked for Darren, as and when. He made sure I had enough. When Em came round in the evenings, Marcus would cook and we’d drink beer or wine and no matter how hard I tried to stay up and make a good show of it, by nine-thirty I’d be done, wiped out, taking the stairs like a geriatric. After I’d gone to bed, I’d lie there and hear them talking as I drifted off, not the words, but the tone, the urgent concern.

Sometimes, I woke in the night and they were gone. Out drinking or clubbing. I didn’t resent it. I’d pretend to be asleep when he came back and would go out early to the shops, make sure there was fresh bread, bacon, and eggs for breakfast, tomato juice, milk. I found condoms in his pocket once and put them back. I didn’t begrudge Marcus that either, a girl he met in a club, an escape.

Peter had disappeared into his life at Oxford and when he came home, he told stories of quads and balls and punting. Em did an art foundation course in Swindon while temping part-time at Nationwide. Everyone expected her to go full-time the following September, but instead she surprised us by taking up a place at Camberwell to study textiles and renting a room in Peckham.

In some ways it was easier with her gone. One less person to hide from. I couldn’t bear people that much, not for too long. Outside of work, I walked a lot, twenty miles at a stretch, sticking to the smaller footpaths, pack of twenty Embassy and a 20 cls of vodka in my pockets. I didn’t drink in the house, smoked up only in the evenings, toeing a line Marcus had drawn. I couldn’t see beyond it.