Sometimes I contrast this with the way we are now. I saw them at the weekend, I went down to stay a couple of nights. I truly believe they have forgotten those worries they had, those sleepless nights, dead-end jobs, clogs to clogs, and everything that was said and thought. They have forgotten the pylon. We are the best of friends. We are approaching the situation of a mutual admiration society. Two particular activities take place during my visits, they have become routine, expected, almost rites. I take Mum and Dad out to dinner on the Saturday night at the best restaurant the neighborhood has to offer, a very grand converted manor house in which the dining room is the former banqueting hall with an outlook on deer grazing on parkland, and I undertake some small electrical job for them. This may only be to mend the kettle or it may be rather more complex, putting in a new power outlet, for instance, or servicing the lawnmower. I think they save up these little tasks for me, probably denying themselves for weeks the use of some appliance, refusing to call in the local man, so that they can have the pleasure of watching me perform the job for which I’m trained.

But all this was a long way off that day in early September eleven years ago. We came close to quarreling. I couldn’t stand two rows in a week with the people I cared for most in the world, so I left early. More buses, a very slow train that kept stopping because of signaling failure, two more buses. It was nearly eleven before I got home.

Silver had been out most of the day, shopping around for flights to Sydney. He was in a dilemma. In one way he wanted the cheapest possible seats, especially for himself, as while he thought that, ethically, Andrew and Alison ought to pay for his round-trip flights, he knew they wouldn’t. Or, rather, Andrew would argue about it and plead poverty, which he couldn’t stand. On the other hand, he had determined that this was the starting point of ridding himself of his grandmother’s legacy. So wouldn’t the most straightforward thing be to buy the most expensive seats possible, even buy first-class seats, a method that would use up everything he had at one swoop?

“Why are you getting rid of it anyway?” I said.

He looked me straight in the eye. I couldn’t read his expression, which was blank and calm, the way he could often make himself look.

“You’ll lose this place. You won’t be able to pay your parents rent. Unless you ask them to let you stay on rent-free. After all, they’re hardly ever here. They’ve only been here once since I came.”