Ten minutes later the article is abandoned and I’m rifling through the box under my bed, already feeling less tense. Ruth used to joke, though now I think she means it seriously, that the only thing I’m fastidious about are my work tapes. Every important interview I’ve done is recorded on tape and stored in a carefully sealed plastic box, labeled in black felt-tip, and ordered alphabetically. Most reporters don’t use tapes now, everything is digitized, but I straddle both generations and can’t resist the security of hard copy. I trace past interviews with boxers, ex-politicians, disgraced bankers, and musicians until I get to the “stories in progress” section. Davis: Simon Nov. 2018.

I had wanted to write about the effect of tragedy on families. How some manage to drag themselves up from grief together, and others buckle and fold. Jakey was in the middle of another grueling round of chemo, our family was suffering. I couldn’t write about illness, there was enough of that at home, so I decided to write about “act of God” tragedies, car crashes and freak accidents. Right from the moment I had the idea, I saw the article take shape in my mind. I wanted to talk about how most adults know the cold horror of near misses—that moment you don’t see the cyclist in your rearview mirror, the second you take your eyes off your toddler to inspect the price of bananas in the supermarket. Most of us have felt how terror turns blood to cement in your veins, the shriek that rises in the throat like bile, but then the cyclist skids to a stop or you see your toddler hiding behind a shopping cart and relief, like bleach, strips you clean. Never again, you tell yourself, never again will I forget to check the mirror, or let her out of my sight. But some parents, like Simon Davis, don’t get a second chance.

I was introduced to Simon through a contact at Dads Without Borders, a national charity that supports fathers’ rights. Seeing as he was just over an hour away in Plymouth, they suggested an interview. The charity warned me Simon had “episodes” of poor mental health and that he’d struggled with depression since his son’s death, but he was, at the time, quite balanced and agreed to the interview. Sitting on my bed, I slide the tape into the Dictaphone and press PLAY.

The noises from the steamy café where I interviewed Simon puff and clatter from the small speaker, pulling me back to the day we met. I remember his watery eyes scanning the café before he saw me waving at him from my small round table. He walked as though some unknown force was pushing him down from above, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed to the ground, as if in constant apology. He had prematurely gray hair and his clothes bunched around his frame, like he used to be bigger. He was an ordinary man who wore an extraordinary sadness.