She pulled some newspaper off a barometer and propped it up. My parents had had a barometer like that, hanging in the hall. I didn’t know how to start or what to say. I sat there on my flimsy chair; any moment it might collapse under my weight. Eleven years of his growing-up, and there was nothing we could talk about. Despite the shorn hair and the changes of address she hadn’t altered, it was the same old Lesley, just as I’d dreaded. This past week I’d felt moments of warmth towards her, but it was all wiped out now. Here she squatted, amongst the debris of other people’s lives; it seemed so pitiful, life seemed one long chain of breaking-up and scattering, my junk piled up in the garden, Costas’s toasters, you grabbed at something and it fell to bits in your hands. My son had slipped through my fingers. I could hear her voice.

‘You can’t see him, Desmond.’

‘He has a right,’ I said. ‘He has a right to me! He’ll want to know.’

‘That’s his business, when he’s old enough.’ She glared at me. ‘He’s just settling down, he’s just got used to his new school, you can’t come barging in here.’ Her voice rose. ‘You can’t come barging in here, just because you suddenly feel like it! Have you thought about him, what he’d feel?’

‘I think about him all the time.’

She looked at me sharply.

‘Some of the time,’ I said. ‘Sometimes.’

‘Men, you make me bloody sick. Who’s brought him up all these years, who’s looked after him, you’ve never had kids, you’ve no idea what it’s like, trying to earn a living and have some sort of life to yourself, then feeling guilty, always feeling guilty, and split in half, split into pieces, trying to be a mother, it’s the hardest bloody job on earth, bringing them up in this terrible world—’

‘Why did you have him then?’

‘Then you come barging in now all the really exhausting stuff’s over, the nappies and the sleepless nights and the measles and asthma and pushing him to playgroup in the pouring rain, and now he’s a nice big boy of eleven who doesn’t shit in his pants anymore here you are, you suddenly decide to miss him, typical bloody male, all soppiness and sentimentality and let’s play train sets together, here you come,’ she indicated the window, ‘you and your phallic symbol, barging into our lives which are perfectly happy thank you!’

‘It’s not a phallic symbol!’ I bellowed. ‘My wife nicked my car!’

I sat there, limp. I was damp with sweat. She sat on the floor. Her face, flushed under its orange tufts, was still talking.