And so they’d made a trip of it, the same kind of trip Dad had loved, the exact sort of day he would have liked himself. By dinner, the balancing of the clashing moods had exhausted them all, and it was something of a relief when Jean left the two of them to find somewhere. She’d get something at the hotel, she said; it would be good for them to spend time together. Sal and James sat in a cheap Italian restaurant full of odd maritime artefacts: a figurehead which Sal would go on to have a nightmare about, a ship’s wheel which diners kept catching their hips on as they were shown to tables. The second time this happened, both of them laughed out loud, and then their eyes met and admitted to each other that it had been a slog. That they were still bruised and incredulous he was gone; that the day’s levity had been purchased at a psychic price which they would feel, like a tough exercise, for a long time to come. And that, however much he would have been delighted by the scene, it was something hard, to watch their father’s remains float away over the old tenements and grubby station roof.

‘We’ve, er … we’ve done well today, I think,’ said James, and she reached out to take his damp hand on the tabletop.

‘You’re looking great,’ she said. ‘I guess the … the exercise programme is working. I mean. You know.’

And he did know, and it had been fine; it was inevitable that people complimented you when you were thinner and expressed concern for you (often behind your back, but sometimes even to your face) if you put weight on. Even though Sally knew this was demoralizing for him, and unhealthy, and all the rest of it, she still slipped up. But it didn’t matter. It was her, so it didn’t matter. The conversation moved on; in fact, moved on a long way, became the last great one they were to have, unless you counted the terrible one that burned the bridge between them.

It was that bit about weight, though, that came back to him now. James’s fist tightened for a second and, in almost unconscious defiance, he brought the second pie out of its wrapper. He didn’t even really want it; the first pie hadn’t been particularly enjoyable, and it would be surprising if this new one outperformed it. Still. Eff you all, he muttered, or thought: he wasn’t sure which.

People talked like it was so simple. Exercise. Cut out the snacks. People who had themselves lost weight, in particular; they were the worst for it. They acted a bit like religious converts: as if they were in possession of some insight which he could not fully understand but which he only had to accept in order to feel as good as them.