I push the door open, and I remember it is not these things that keep me away. It is the smell: an awesome smell, a faint breath of my son, who went to ride his motorbike and never came back to this room. He was sixteen years old, and never survived the jump over the contour bank that landed him on his head — a head unprotected by a helmet, not enforced by his witless father. Sarah will never forgive me, and I can never forgive myself. This is an awful place, so beautiful that I can’t bear to be here.

But now his room reminds me that I used to argue that he had to be allowed to live, to experience risk, and the thrill of it all. He loved me for that. That’s got to be worth something. I tried hard to allow him to push his boundaries. I wanted him to know that a bit of pain or a broken limb weren’t the end of the world. But as my mother would have said, ‘It’s all fine until it goes wrong.’ And it went so wrong.

I recollect now, without crying, his excitement when we brought that bike home. He had had a bike too small and weak for him for too long. It embarrassed him, but Sarah was convinced he would hurt himself on anything bigger. She allowed the new, bigger bike, but bemoaned its existence at every opportunity, and insisted on that helmet at all times. So it was only when she was away, in town or visiting friends, unable to police her rules, that he was permitted the freedom of riding without a helmet. I told him not to be stupid about it, and that if he was trying out new stunts he had to come back and put the helmet on. Every time he agreed, and every time he laughed it off.

That day, when Sarah got home from town, James hadn’t returned from his ride, so we both went to look for him. She had seen the helmet hanging in the garage, and was frantic. I was talking her down, telling both of us that he was fine, just a little late. How many times afterwards did she scream my words of reassurance back at me: ‘He’s fine. He’s just a little late,’ condensing the lethal stupidity and carelessness of my character into two short sentences.