The weird thing about the past few months with his father—the lying, the raging, the escape attempts—was that Gordon had begun to like him. When Gordon was a child, Ron had been something of a stranger. Gordon’s chief parent was Norma, while Ron was the provider, a functionary more than a fully-formed person. Perhaps blurred by disappointment—the easier explanation—Ron had never shown any sign of wanting Gordon to know him. He had retreated behind the cover of his role. Now that Gordon saw his father for what he was, a human battered by his history and weakened by his flaws, he finally knew and trusted him. He trusted Ron to lie every time he opened his mouth, but at least this trust was real. In all those years of childhood, Gordon had placed his trust in a fantasy, a stoic father dignified by permanent mourning, his monumental Dadness, never a person Gordon could love anywhere near as much as this old liar with his eye on a death march to Capri.

‘Has Mum been today?’

Ron wiped his mouth and took a theatrical pause. ‘She’s locked me up and thrown away the key.’

‘You don’t look locked up.’

Ron sniffed derisively. ‘They’ll have to get up earlier to keep me from cracking their code.’

The nursing home lift had a keypad with a ‘secret’ four-digit security code designed to stop the residents from getting out. The staff had changed the code at least once a fortnight in the months Ron had lived there, and he kept cracking it. How? Gordon wouldn’t put it past the determined old devil to camp in the lift all night, start at 0000 and tunnel his way out from there.

Gordon nodded at a bandage on Ron’s temple, an elastic guard on his wrist and a scratch on his cheekbone.

‘You’ve had another fall.’

‘Pfft.’

‘That’s why you’re living there. Mum can’t look after you.’

‘I can look after myself.’

Gordon was unwilling to get caught in this squirrel-wheel. Ron only wanted to be in the apartment and for Norma to leave him alone. Oh, after serving him three meals a day, doing his washing and ironing, making his bed, cleaning his toilet, purchasing his medications and calling the ambulance when he collapsed, among other less savoury duties. Aside from that, he didn’t need any looking after at all! Why couldn’t the blessed woman understand? ‘She would let you spend every day at home if she could trust you to go back to the nursing home in the evenings.’

‘I will not be trusted!’ Ron exploded.

‘I don’t think that came out quite how you meant it,’ Gordon said. ‘But anyway. You keep on plotting and scheming and lying, nobody will visit you.’

‘Why would I want anyone to visit me?’ Ron said, his face empurpling.