He looks around him and says in a hushed voice, ‘Come inside and we can go out back and have a proper chat, in private.’

My eyes fixate on his unbuttoned shirt and I imagine his grey clipped chest hair rubbing against me like a Brillo pad, and my leg starts to do its spastic thing again.

‘What’s up with that?’ he says, staring at the shaking leg.

I shrug. ‘Just been to the hospital. Hurt my ankle.’

‘You sure it wasn’t another failed attempt?’ he says, looking pointedly at my wrist.

The scars are so faded no one normally notices them. I pull my sleeves right down. ‘If I’d meant anything by that I’d have cut vertically, not horizontally,’ I say, trying on a jaunty tone, even though his observation has made me feel shitty and exposed. I know I should go now, I know this man shouldn’t be speaking to me in this way, yet neither of my legs seem capable of movement.

‘Your mother’s a regular in here,’ he says, hoping for some kind of a reaction from me. I’m too stunned. How has he made the connection? She never brought me here, never – hoping, I think, to keep the fantasy alive that it wasn’t as bad as all that, that she wasn’t as bad as all that. ‘Just a glass or two of an evening, William, that’s all’, in spite of me telling Dad she fell on her way to the bathroom, wet herself, or couldn’t speak her tongue was so thick, or that she hit me, breaking the wooden spoon over my legs in one of her rages. There eventually came a time when I stopped telling him anything; it felt too bad to be disbelieved, or dismissed.

The boss-man tries on his fake concerned voice again and says, ‘Couldn’t blame you for running away. Can’t be fun having to contend with that.’ This is the tone Brian used with me when he was gaining my trust: make her think you care, and then she’s putty in your hands. She’s so starving for love, that one. And I fell for it. Not this time, mister. ‘I’m sure you must need someone to talk to …’ Yup, this is the spiel all right.

‘Come on in and we can have a nice cup of tea – discuss your options …’