‘I don’t know yet, Sonya.’ His voice is becoming fractious. ‘I’ll take advice from the experts on that.’

Experts. Who are these people?

‘Tell him exactly how long it will be before I’m out of here, Dad. Tell him I’ve been unwell. Getting better…’ Nothing they say can explain this away.

The receptionist waves at me. ‘Time’s up.’

‘See you Sunday. Between two and five, remember? Come at two?’

He mutters that he will see me then.

‘Bye, Dad.’ I almost choke on the word. I throw a final insincere ‘And thank you’ down the line, which reverberates back, an empty echo.

The next few days are exhausting, my nights being taken over by bolts of manic energy, my dreams and waking state at 4 a.m. jumbled together, one indistinguishable from the other. Surges of adrenalin rush through me, making me want to run. At home I’d masturbate, before Tommy came along, for a kind of release. Here, with people either side of me, it’s impossible, so I lie rigid, eyes open and staring, trying to block the livid images that snarl and unsnarl behind my lids any time my eyes close.

‘You ok?’ Linda asks early one morning. ‘Crazy dark circles under your eyes.’

‘Can’t sleep.’ I push myself to sitting, arranging the lumpy pillow behind my back.

‘Is it my snoring? Maybe you should ask to be moved, or I could?’

Funny how Linda’s snoring has become a strange nocturnal companion, a welcome distraction from my own chasing, circling thoughts.

‘Fuck, no. Don’t think I could do this without you.’

Linda responds so well to any kind of compliment that I can see how easy it must be for Mark to manipulate her. Her cheeks flush and a broad smile reveals her yellow teeth and wide gaps between them. It’s endearing in a way that a toddler’s gummy mouth is. A longing so powerful to hold my boy floods me and I close my eyes to stop the tears.

‘What’s going on?’

I lie back on the pillow, spent. There’s the crack, directly above my head. It doesn’t seem to be offering any out, any portal to another world.

‘Tommy,’ I manage. ‘I’m going to see my little boy on Sunday. It’s been so long I’m scared he won’t recognise me, that he’ll make strange. Scared of hearing him talk about Herbie. I’ve no idea what’s happened to Herbie.’

‘You’ve never spoken about him before.’ Her voice is shaky and small. ‘He another boy?’

‘Our dog.’

‘Fuck’s sake, you had me worried there for a moment.’

I’m not even going to bother trying to explain how much like a second son, or big brother to Tommy, he is.

Linda rolls on to her back and the two of us lie there, staring at the dirty smudges and a bad paint job at the corners of the ceiling, before she says quietly, ‘I had a little girl taken away from me.’

‘Jesus… Linda…’

She holds her hand up to silence me.