I thought about my mother at my father’s funeral: the overcoats piled on top of each other; the pockets filled with socks. I thought about her that Christmas, stroking the rabbit, wearing her crown while my father watched her wordlessly. I thought about her saying: My little boy likes rabbit pie, and: Don’t tell him, will you? And then my mind went back to the beach at Blackpool, and the cold wind that always seemed to be blowing there, and the gray, gritty sand, and my parents, already old, under their tartan blankets.

So many children’s stories start with the death of the parents. Without our parents, we are free: free to travel; to have adventures; to develop our powers; to fall in love. The ultimate childhood hero is always an orphan: Peter Pan; Siegfried; Tom Sawyer; Superman. Do we really wish them dead? Of course not. Of course not. But boys play so many games. Cowboys and Indians. Cops and robbers. Good guy one day, bad guy the next, then home, for tea and sandwiches. But what did we dream, in those long-ago days, between the school yard and the canal? Didn’t we sometimes, like Peter Pan, wish it could last forever? Didn’t I, sometimes, as a boy, wish myself an orphan?

I topped up Winter’s brandy. “So, you live with your mother?” I said.

He shrugged. “It’s not always easy. I mean—she’s not always easy.”

“I think I know how you feel,” I said. “It’s natural to feel that way.”

“There’s nothing natural about Ma. Ma’s a genetic anomaly. Like the cockroach, she’ll survive alien invasion, nuclear war. She’s immortal. When I die, she’ll be there, holding a cup of the vitamin drink she made me swallow when I was a boy. How I always hated it.”

How I always hated her.

Poor Winter. No wonder he lied. No wonder he spends all his time online, building fantasy friendships. Sic transit Gloria mundi. I gave a wince at the bad pun. Sometimes I worry that I don’t know how to deal with emotional distress. Perhaps it’s the way I was brought up, but outpourings of feeling have always made me feel profoundly uncomfortable. Maybe it’s a good thing that I never married; from what I know of women (albeit not very much, most of it gleaned from Kitty Teague, or Danielle, or Mary, my old cleaner), life with them is a minefield of hormones, tears, and misery.