‘I’m on my way to Dover to collect some holidaymakers,’ I said. ‘I’m only staying for five minutes.’

Me, devious?

She relaxed, a little, and stubbed out her cigarette on the top of a pile of old saucers. ‘You got kids?’ she asked.

I shook my head.

She sat down. ‘He’s a smashing boy. He’s been really supportive.’

Supportive? Children shouldn’t have to be supportive, surely. That was the parents’ job. I didn’t say anything. I had to play her, delicately, on a string. It was touch and go.

‘He’s kept me going, him and Vicky,’ she said. ‘Stopped me going under.’

‘They make sense of it all, don’t they.’

I stopped; I hadn’t meant to say that. She looked at me sharply. I drank some tea.

‘Does he know who his real father is?’ I asked.

She pulled out some newspaper bundles from the packing case and started unwrapping a wine glass. ‘He thought another bloke was for a while, a bloke I lived with, but when he buggered off I told Edward the truth. I didn’t want him to think that men just dumped their children.’

They don’t! I wanted to shout.

‘That they were such sods,’ she said.

Fuck ’em and forget ’em: that’s what men were supposed to do. Nowadays, women seemed to have joined in. Sitting there, I suddenly remembered how I’d felt that day in the Wimpy Bar, eleven years before, when she had told me. I’d felt like women must feel; I’d felt used.

‘Some role model this bloke made,’ she said, unpacking a sherry decanter. ‘Barry, Sitting around waiting for his tea. Getting wrecked every night. Jumping everything that moved.’

I thought of Reg and the unfairness of it all. Reg had four beautiful children who worshipped him; they would be his for life. I watched her as she unwrapped a potty; it was made of cracked china. ‘Does he know who I am?’

She shook her head. ‘I said it was just a bloke.’

‘I’m not just a bloke!’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Got a splitting headache. Vicky was up all night.’

I was up all night, I wanted to say. My head throbs too. There was a silence.

‘How’s he doing at school?’ I asked.

‘Fine.’

Another silence. ‘What’s his best subjects?’

‘Football and computers.’