‘I’m sorry, Rhys, I don’t know what to say.’

‘Really? But you told me you were going to help.’ He stares. ‘Apparently it took ages, the process Mum and Dad went through. They fought for me and our David. Mum always said they really wanted to be parents, but I’ve often wondered about Dad – if he just went along for the ride. He didn’t stick around in the end.’

‘Ah,’ I say. As if I now understand everything.

‘Oh, that’s not it, though. No. Dad went off with some woman. Mum always made apologies for him. He was made redundant when the steelworks closed. She said he didn’t deal with it very well, said he made a mistake, but she never tried to get him back so she couldn’t have forgiven him. He stopped bothering with us pretty quickly. She’d try to set stuff up, visits and so on. I remember, one time, he was supposed to take us to see a film. National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation with Chevy Chase. He didn’t bother turning up.’ He laughs to himself, but not in humour. ‘Dad just stopped turning up for everything in the end. He got a new family. Children of his own, apparently. Real ones.’ Rhys lets out a deep breath. ‘So we were dropped. Left. Abandoned.’

He labours that final point and I wonder how he must have felt, knowing the pain of parental rejection. How that affects each day. How that might make you feel to learn you were trying to help a person who has rejected a child. ‘I guess that must have been—’

‘Hard?’ He rolls his eyes. ‘Wow, why don’t you just ask me how it made me feel and be done with it!’

I’m out of my depth and he can sense it. But I’m here, sitting in his van and trying to present a solution. I can’t exactly bail now. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so trite.’

We sit in silence, both staring out of the windscreen. My heart is racing and I’m desperately trying to work out what to say next.

‘Do you think suicide is selfish?’ he asks without warning.

I hold my breath for a moment, my chest feeling the pressure. ‘I don’t think anything is ever black and white,’ I answer, carefully.

‘Leaving people behind though, people who might need you. What sort of person does that?’

‘Someone who doesn’t feel they have any other choice? Can’t see another way out.’ I close my eyes, searching for the strength to get this conversation right. Assuming it’s even possible to do so. ‘I think sometimes they believe those around them would be better off when they’re gone.’

‘How could anyone believe that?’

‘I don’t know. But I think in that moment they do. That’s their reason.’

‘And what about Susan?’ he asks, his voice colder now. ‘What might her reason have been?’

‘Who knows, Rhys. We can’t second-guess these things. We can’t assume we’ve any insight into people’s choices. Whether we agree, whether we respect her choice or not, it wasn’t our decision to make.’