Something about his son’s impatience, the way his features have sharpened with irritation, reminds Anton painfully of Charlotte.

‘Mark,’ he says quietly. ‘All that went on in our house. You were just a child. You couldn’t know. How could I possibly give it up?’

‘You’re right in that I was just a child, but there are still some things I remember about Mum, things I’d forgotten, but lately seem to be coming back.’

There’s a pointed manner to the way he says this, and Anton’s senses are heightened. He is made nervous by this territory. Danger lurks within these memories. He senses Mark’s wariness and knows that he, too, must tread carefully.

‘What sort of things?’ he asks.

‘I dunno. Little things. Like the way she used to put her make-up on. Remember that time I fell off the trampoline and split my knee open, and Mum called for an ambulance? I was talking to a friend about it recently, and I suddenly remembered Mum waiting for the ambulance to arrive and dabbing on face powder, spritzing perfume on her neck, and it came back to me how she used to call it giving herself “a quick going-over”.’

Anton smiles and nods. He remembers that, too.

‘The only time I’ve ever been in an ambulance,’ Mark says. ‘I can still recall the smell of it – ointment and plasters and Chanel No 5.’

Something hard now creeps into Mark’s tone. ‘You weren’t there that day,’ he tells Anton.

‘No. I was probably at work.’

Mark holds his gaze, his expression unreadable. ‘Why did Mum call an ambulance?’ he asks now. ‘Why didn’t she just put me and Sandy in the car and drive to A and E?’

His tone is brittle, and Anton doesn’t reply, suspecting that Mark already knows the answer.

‘She was drunk, wasn’t she?’

‘I don’t know, son. Perhaps.’

‘I remember her drinking. It’s another thing that’s come back to me. “Just a little tinkle,” she used to say to us, and then she’d splash white wine in a glass and take it out into the garden.’

He is half smiling at the memory but Anton gets the feeling that other emotions are just beneath the surface. Something about the manner of his reminiscence feels unsettling, like a dark force threatening to break through from beneath.

‘People talk about growing up with an alcoholic parent, how miserable and frightening it was for them, but that’s not how I remember it. She didn’t slug back vodka with grim determination while we sat festering in our own filth. She seemed perfectly happy. Was she, though?’ he asks Anton, a sharpness to the question. ‘Happy, I mean?’

‘Some of the time, son.’

‘But not always.’

‘None of us is happy all the time.’

‘But there must have been something more,’ he persists, ‘some deeper unhappiness that made her drink.’