So I told him. As I’m about to tell you. To help you understand.

She was cooking. Real food, like she did back then. A Sunday roast. Beef and Yorkshire pudding. My favourite. I salivated as the smells floated into the lounge, where I lay on the floor watching cartoons. Our dog, Alfie, pawed my back as I repeatedly swatted him away, scolded him. It wasn’t Alfie’s fault. I was already sulking because I’d not long asked if I could have a packet of crisps.

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Connie. Dinner will be ready soon.’ She was having none of it, didn’t understand how hungry I was, how much I liked beef and Yorkshire pudding, and would still eat it no matter what.

Dad was upstairs playing his guitar. He’d practise for hours on Sundays. I heard him tell Mum once it was the only thing he had left of himself. She said, ‘For Christ’s sake, Patrick, that ship’s sailed.’

He was my pop star. I’d always request the song ‘In the Gateau’: As the cream dries . . . where the chocolate and cherries are . . . a chubby little baby falls . . . In the gateau. It’d make me giggle beyond my control. The image of a baby falling into a giant cake was too much. It wasn’t until I was seventeen, listening to the radio in my room, and the DJ introduced a song by Elvis called ‘In the Ghetto’ that I realized he’d just changed the words. That our song never really existed.

Mum was in a strange mood. I think she’d been crying. I’d heard her in the bathroom earlier. And the night before. And the night before that.

They hadn’t argued for a long time. Not since we came back from holidaying at the caravan in Llandudno with the Parkers and their daughter, Marsha. I liked Marsha. She was seven and taller than me. We collected hundreds of pebbles and shells in a bucket together on the beach. Counted them in the evenings. But after the holiday Mum said I couldn’t see Marsha again because Mrs Parker was a whore.

A religious programme followed the cartoons. I wanted to turn over but was worried God would be angry with me. So I rested my head on Alfie’s tummy and drifted off to sleep with him, until I was woken by Dad stroking my hair.

Rubbing my tired, prickly eyes, I pulled myself up from the floor. Alfie had woken too and was jumping all over Dad.

‘Good boy. Good boy, Alfie,’ he said, until it got too much and changed to ‘Get down. Get down, Alfie.’ He obeyed, like the good dog he was, and dropped to the floor, flat, his eyes the only part of him moving. Doing his Princess Di look, Mum called it.