I walked up the street towards the house. I simply couldn’t think of anything else to do. God knew what I was going to say; there was no point planning when nothing turned out the way I expected anyway. Suddenly I felt exhausted. I’d missed my son, yet again; he’d slipped through my fingers. Now I was here, a few yards from his house, I felt drained. How many houses had I approached, my heart thumping, this past week? Arsenal, Leicester, Windermere, Reading, Spalding. Perhaps, now I knew he was a real boy, I should give it all up and go back to London.

I stopped. On the other side of the street, Lesley’s door was opening. A woman came out, holding the hand of a little girl.

I stared at her. I thought: fancy Lesley having an au pair.

She wore a black shiny raincoat and her hair, short as a lavatory brush, was bright orange. I was too far away to see her well. She knelt down and buttoned up the little girl’s coat, then they started walking down the street.

However much people change, their walk remains the same. It was Lesley. She had lost weight and dyed her hair, but it was unmistakably her. I ducked down behind a car. She took the girl up the path of a neighbouring house and rang the bell. A woman, holding a baby, opened the door; Lesley kissed her little girl goodbye and left here there.

Before I could move, she went back to her van and climbed in. It took her a while to get it started, I heard the grinding engine noises as I walked quickly away, to the corner of the main road.

By the time the van appeared at the corner I was in my coach. I started the motor, and when the van pulled into the traffic I followed it.

She was still a terrible driver. The van swung out, without indicating, and overtook a car. I thought bitterly: she should never have passed her test. She wasn’t fit to be in charge of a van, let alone two children, dragging them across England, in and out of rented accommodation and unsuitable love affairs, therapy and trance-dances, dumping them with child-minders and exposing them to the elements on Greenham Common. Some mother she was. How dare she dispense with fathers so blithely? Now I knew she hadn’t taken Barry back I felt a pang of sympathy for him.