Kelly looked to Gordon, but the argument was too old for him to get involved in. The bargain of his parents’ marriage had been the traditional one: Ronald took care of Norma by providing, and Norma took care of Ronald by giving him undisputed authority. Ronald had trained Norma as nursemaid and surrogate mother as well as wife; but alas, he had trained her too well, and when her fear of him falling over and cracking his head open got too much—when she nursemaided him to the verge of insanity—Ron had decided he did not want that kind of attention anymore. What he wanted now was a second kind of servant: one who would remain invisible until called for. Gordon wanted to say to Ron, After fifty-six years, you want to renegotiate the deal? Bad luck, fella.

Gordon also wanted to tell his father: You have those kinds of people right where you’re living: they’re called staff.

But every time he got mad at his father, his mother did something insufferable and his sympathies lobbed back to Ron. Maybe his dad could live at home, if his mum were not so overprotective. It was exhausting. In trying to take both sides, Gordon found himself unhappily on neither.

Kelly was at his shoulder. ‘You have to do something.’

Gordon walked across the fourth green, taking Ben as protection.

‘Grandma, Grandpa, there are people behind us, we have to move on to the next hole.’

Norma and Ron stared at Ben as if he had just landed from Mars. Norma’s attention was diverted by Barb and Peg, who sallied up to the apron of the green in their cart. With a well-bred muttering, Gordon’s parents shuffled on, Ron bent over, Norma chittering along beside him. There was something beautiful, Gordon thought, in the way his mother was clutching his father’s arm; for once, neither of them trying to win. Back at school, a religious education teacher had once told Gordon’s class that they should act all the time as if they were being watched by God. Gordon had never been convinced. But now he thought, if only his parents could act all the time as if they were being watched by the membership of the Bluebird Country Club.

Perhaps, Gordon thought later, Ron had engineered that encounter on the fourth green to create confusion on the next hole. Norma took her driver out of her golf bag and climbed the stone steps to join Ben and Kelly on the fifth tee. Below, on the cart path, Gordon saw that there were only two drivers—Lou and himself—and three carts. He asked Lou to drive Ron down, while he, Gordon, would take his cart and tell Kelly to collect the third cart. But there was a communication breakdown somewhere, and when he parked his cart at the bottom of the path beneath the tee, Gordon turned to see Lou driving up alone.

‘Which is that?’ he said.

‘It’s Kelly’s.’

‘So where’s yours?’