Blunt and hurtful, but sadly true. Gordon’s break-up with Kelly had shown him how differently others perceived him from how he saw himself. Was this what life was about? Stumbling over the bleeding obvious: that you were not who you thought you were, and that everyone else was right about you? Was the big reveal that fuckwits like Tony Eastaugh, who’d known you since you were a kid, who showed no wholesome interest in you, knew you better than you knew yourself? What an anticlimax, not to mention a poorly constructed narrative. It was the shapelessness of life, more than its sheer capacity to disappoint, that stopped Gordon from ever believing in, say, God.

‘You should probably apologise,’ Sam said to his father.

‘Who to?’ Tony said, and he had a point, Gordon thought.

Tony bumbled to his feet and drained his coffee. His fart, on rising, sounded squelchier than the earlier one. ‘That’s my cue,’ he announced, turning for the bathroom and pushing his glasses onto the bridge of his nose as if he was going to need reading-strength eyesight for what he would find in there. Over his shoulder he said, ‘You’ll have to go to Chemist Warehouse for me, son.’