‘I don’t know, son, I really don’t know. Something inside him’s switched off.’

‘Hardly surprising, is it?’ There’s repressed rage in Matt’s voice. ‘What’s happened to him, what he’s been through . . . I have to stop myself thinking about it. If I think about it, it makes me so angry I could kill someone.’

Jack swills the whisky in his glass. ‘Maybe he feels the same.’

‘I worry that his life is slipping by. He’s missed so much already – school, of course, and friendships. All those things we wanted for him, gone. How will he ever catch up? Sometimes I think his life is ruined forever. Is he destined just to stay in that dark place where he is now? Will he ever come back from there? What happens if he doesn’t?’

‘Is he still seeing that counsellor?’

Matt sighs. They had kept all their appointments, ushering Evan into the waiting room of a converted Victorian gentleman’s residence, sitting on the hard chairs, flicking through back copies of dog-eared magazines while a mahogany-cased clock ticked in the hallway. The place was drab, dark, unappealing, but Evan submitted quietly, as he seems to submit to pretty much everything, these days. When she called him through to her office, Dr Mellor was soft-spoken and kind, the sort of woman you’d want for a favourite aunt, unsexy, unthreatening, the epitome of a human being you’d trust.

Matt had imagined with some unease the kind of things Evan and Dr Mellor might discuss, mentally squirming at the possible involvement of anatomically correct dolls and explicit diagrams. A part of him had been irrationally jealous, thinking his son was confiding in a stranger what he wouldn’t say to him, even though, God knew, the last thing on earth he wanted to hear was what Evan had to say. To know the facts would be unbearable; only to imagine them allowed a level of denial, an element of soft-focus which kept the pain in check. Certain knowledge of his son’s suffering would mean those responsible would have to die. Which wasn’t a problem, necessarily. If Matt spent the rest of his life in jail, honour would be satisfied, and it would be appropriate payback for his not having protected Evan in the first place.

But there had been no discussions, explicit or otherwise.

‘They canned it after three sessions,’ he says to Jack. ‘He wouldn’t speak to her any more than he’ll talk to us.’

After the last session, while Claire led a sad, silent Evan out to the car, Matt had taken the opportunity to talk to Dr Mellor and express his most pressing concerns.

‘He seems younger than when he left us,’ he said. ‘Like some kind of Peter Pan.’