Now was as good a time as any, I thought. Otherwise we’d settle back into our routine of question and non-answer. I said quietly, ‘Let’s not talk about dusting, then. Let’s talk about you and me.’ He kept his head turned away and I couldn’t tell if he was listening. ‘You see, I’m afraid of things going wrong between us. If we don’t talk to each other about anything at all, except to ask if supper’s ready or to argue about house cleaning, the silence will just grow and get deeper, and in the end we won’t know how to break it, ever. You can tell me to leave you alone or ask me to go away, if that’s how it’s got to be, but I’m still your mum, Jack, and I care about you more than anything in the world.’

He went on fixedly not looking at me.

‘It’s all right to talk to you like this, isn’t it, even if you won’t answer? There are some things I want to tell you that might help you to understand why all this is important. One of them is that I was very unhappy when I was your age. Your gran died – you know that – and there was Grandad and me left in the house on our own. Just like this.’ I made a gesture that took in the two of us and the four walls. ‘Only Grandad was never there for me to talk to.’

‘Why?’

The monosyllable took me by surprise. He was listening, then.

‘He went out to work. He had to do that, of course. He had girlfriends, and he liked to go out and enjoy himself with them. It didn’t suit him to have a child to look after and he was selfish about his own pleasures. And I was jealous and therefore probably quite demanding.’

That was a fair summary, I thought. I didn’t want to demonise Ted in his grandson’s eyes.

‘There were other things too that I didn’t understand so well, to do with money. He borrowed money from people and didn’t pay it back, and when they came looking for him he used to disappear. I’m only just beginning to understand that he behaved like that probably, but I’ll never know for sure now, to protect me. I never realised that he didn’t want me to be, what’s the word, tainted? But the sad thing is that I would much rather have known what was happening to him and been allowed to know him better. What happened was that we drifted further and further apart as I grew up, and even right at the end, when he was lying there in the hospital in Bedford, we couldn’t connect with each other again.’

Jack said nothing.