‘I wanted to tell him that I loved him and I didn’t manage it. So I’m telling you now that I love you and I always want to be here. If you’ll let me.’

I was going to break the cycle somehow. I wished I could have sounded more eloquent, but too much language might have edged Jack further away.

Jack still said nothing. The assurance would never spill from him with Lola’s ease, I knew that. But he couldn’t make himself speak at all and I felt his confusion and also his stubbornness. I knew I was the enemy to Jack. Maybe the best thing I could do for him was accept it and not mind too much.

‘You’re always here, Mum,’ he said. He made a little enclosing movement with his hands to indicate that I fenced him in with my anxiety and possessiveness. Perhaps Tony was right and I did try too much. So did parents always get it wrong, however hard they tried? I wondered. Or was my family alone in this?

I smiled and stood up. ‘And always will be.’

He took up his binoculars again in evident relief. ‘Am I going to Dad’s next weekend?’

It was the weekend he was due to go, according to our usual arrangement. ‘Yes. If you want to, of course.’

He nodded. ‘Yeah. I do.’

‘Good.’ I kissed the top of his dusty head quickly, before he could avoid it. ‘Let’s unpack your things and put them in the machine. I’m making penne with tuna for supper.’ One of his favourites.

‘Okay.’ He sighed.

The damp clothes in his bag smelled of sea water, and a scatter of sand fell out on the carpet as I unfurled them. After some prodding Jack admitted that they had had sailing lessons in the harbour, and long hikes with map-reading tests, and that Wes and some of the others had got drunk on red wine bought at the Hypermarché. ‘Dean Gower puked up in the bunk room,’ he said. ‘It was all red.’

‘Lovely.’

‘Mr Rainbird cleared it up. He was okay about it.’

‘Was he? What was the best bit of the trip?’

‘There was a huge colony of nesting guillemots on some cliffs right by the centre.’

The next morning Jack went to school without a word of protest. He said he would be late back, because he was going to Bird Club.

I put the finishing touches to Colin’s book. It looked extremely handsome in its fat red slipcase with his name blind tooled on the spine and front. Penny was working on a stack of Law Reports and Cassie was perched on a stool at the end of her bench. She had a pile of Duplo bricks spread around her and banged at them busily with a small wooden hammer. ‘My work,’ she said seriously. ‘I’m busy, thank you.’