I keep the cheese-and-japaleno bagels – Lacy likes those – and the guacamole to go with them. That’ll work for lunch. And I keep the fourteen-ounce tub of Häagen-Dazs Bourbon Praline Pecan ice cream. The bourbon flavour is strong, but Lacy likes it that way.

I make sure we both thank Chris again before we leave.

‘I’m free! I’m free!’ Cedar says in a cartoon squeaky voice once the door has closed behind us.

‘And can I assume that you’ll be making sure you stay that way?

‘Yes.’ A sterner tone, wanting the conversation topic to die its last death here and now.

In the car, I give him his choice of music and he picks his preferred classic-hits radio station. As we cross Glacier Creek, it goes from Green Day’s ‘When I Come Around’ to its Deep Disco Dive segment, and Boney M’s ‘Rivers of Babylon’.

I’m about to bore him with a few Boney M facts when he says, ‘The day I turn eighteen, I’m gonna write the f-word on my hand.’ There’s a pause, in case I take the bait. ‘Because you and Mom can’t stop me then.’

Perhaps this is an insight into where his mind goes in twenty minutes of window cleaning – dreams of sticking it to the man, and the dull tyranny of the adult world in general. His father, I think, hardly moderates his language at all around Cedar. Lacy and I have explained that adults have a licence to use bad language, and most of them know when not to. Cedar views adult life as cruisey, responsibility-free, a leisurely backstroke through profanity, beer and hot cars.

‘But remember,’ I tell him, still with some of the tone of the talk at the Merc, ‘with great power comes great responsibility.’

‘Yeah, yeah. I so want to send you a poop emoji right now.’

He talks a good game for someone without a phone. Taboo words fascinate him. I’ve been there in the moment of him acquiring several, and it’s an active process. He senses the word, or our deflections from it, when it drops into conversation, commits it to memory and tests it out in a sentence within hours. He is convinced the world gets very sweary when the lights are out, and he sometimes leaves his bedroom door open at night, just in case he can catch some of the action.

Cedar believes in the existence of a Michael Jackson song called ‘Pelican’ so laden with profane language that, not only will no-one play it for him, adults conspire to deny its existence. Lacy and I can’t win that one.

‘Hey,’ he says, ‘can I have your phone? To catch Pokémon?’

He was on a phone ban until he’d done his time at the Merc. I take a quick look in the mirror. He’s got his pleading face on. I raise my eyebrows. It’s a gesture as contrived as his.

‘Please,’ he says in a hurry. ‘Can I have your phone, please?’