The food sobered me up, just a bit, and I wondered what I was going to do. Tomorrow I would have to go back to London. Robbie was not only younger than me, he was smaller; his shirt chafed my armpits. I wondered what it was really like, bringing up children. Was it really like this?

I decided to have one last go. I leaned across to Pitt and asked: ‘Did you know Lesley Featherstone?’

‘Lesley?’

Robbie said: ‘The woman who talked all the time, remember? She was shagging that bloke called Barry.’

‘Ah, that Lesley,’ she said. ‘The one who smashed our car.’

‘It was only a dent,’ he said.

‘Were they hurt?’ I cried.

‘No.’

I smiled. ‘Sounds like Lesley,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘I taught her to drive.’ I finished my coffee. ‘Do you know where she went?’ Piff thought for a moment, then she said: ‘It’d be on that insurance form.’

‘What would?’ asked Robbie.

I stared at them.

‘Her forwarding address,’ said Piff. ‘She had to write it down in case there was a claim, remember?’

Robbie got up and went across to an overflowing desk. He rummaged around in its drawers; then he found a piece of paper and brought it over.

‘Spalding.’

‘Spalding?’ I asked.

‘She’s gone to Spalding.’ He showed me the paper. It said Graceland, East Fen Road, Spalding, Lincs.

It was one of the worst nights I had ever spent. For a start, there were various lumps under my cushions. Investigating them, I pulled out a tractor, a kangaroo and two shoes (odd). Also several crisp packets; they weren’t hard, just crackly when I turned. The Aga made me swelter.

I still felt drunk. I gazed at the tilting ceiling and tried to gather my thoughts about Barry. The unthinkable had happened. My son had a father. Did he call him Dad? I pictured Barry twirling him around, as Robbie had twirled his son; I pictured my own son clinging to Barry’s chest hairs.

I knew so little. Barry was a boatman. Lesley had worked in a pub and smashed a car. Her shadowy life, years removed, was thickening up and growing clearer. Why had she suddenly fallen in love, after all these years of women’s talk? I felt suddenly loyal to her female friends, those invisible Leicester house-sharers, as if Lesley had let the side down. What was so great, anyway, about this Barry bloke? What had he got that I hadn’t?

I decided, turning on my slipping cushions, that I wasn’t really jealous about Lesley; I was jealous about my son. Just because he could wield an oar, why should this man sit through my son’s chicken pox? He’d had years of his growing-up; I could never catch up. He had taken him to school; Edward had held his homy boatman’s hand. Edward knew no better.

Had they met in Leicester? Was her passion strong enough to uproot her from her convictions? Or had she brought Edward up here on holiday, and this Barry, muscles flexed, had pushed their boat onto the lake and grinned at her with his white teeth, toppling a lifetime’s ball-breaking moaning?