‘Mr Mullen is my father,’ I said lamely, the old joke.

‘I’m looking for Sean. Sean Mullen.’

‘I’m him.’

‘Your father is actually why I’m calling, Sean. I’m Dr Sparling, one of the doctors here at Grey Nuns Hospital in Edmonton. Your father asked me to ring you, to update you on the results of his recent colonoscopy. We weren’t anticipating it, but uh, we did in fact find something and your father wanted me to talk to you about that?’

‘ “Something”,’ I quoted.

Polyps, Sparling said, a cluster of large and serrated polyps. Large did not sound good. Serrated did not sound good. Sparling said she had removed what she could during the colonoscopy and biopsied the extracted material. The results had come back confirming that my father’s bowels were either cancerous or precancerous. I did not quite catch the distinction, distracted as I was by Linus, who had become suddenly interested in a certain spot along the base of the fence. I watched the animal lower his head and commence frenetically digging, clods of dirt spitting up into the air either side of him. Sparling said that my father was going straight back in for surgery tomorrow morning. The dirt continued to fly and, with a slithering, ­eel-­like contraction, Linus squeezed his head, shoulders and the front half of his torso down and into the gap he had created. His rear legs trembled, braced, and with a second and final shove the back half of his torso followed the first and the dog was gone.

‘What the fuck,’ I said.

‘I know this is difficult information to receive,’ Sparling said.

‘OK. I just. My father knows about this?’ I said. ‘Why didn’t he call me?’

‘He’s, uh, resting right now. And he wanted me to call,’ Sparling said. ‘In a difficult circumstance like this, sometimes a patient prefers a doctor to speak to a loved one first, in order to give a clearer picture of things and answer any questions that the loved one might have.’

‘Me being the loved one,’ I said.

‘Of course.’

I went outside and Buddy got up and followed me to the end of the garden. I looked down at the ragged chute of soil beneath the fence that Linus had improvised and wedged himself through. The fence itself was tall, taller than me. I placed an eye up to the sliver of space between adjacent slats. I couldn’t see ­much – foliage, rocks, shadow.

‘Your father is at the beginning of a difficult journey,’ Sparling said.

‘His whole life’s been a difficult journey,’ I said.

Silence. I heard the doctor clear her throat.

‘OK. Well. That’s the situation as it stands now, Mr Mullen. If you have any ­questions—’

‘I won’t,’ I said and hung up.