A woman pushing a double buggy gave me a hard look as she passed. I walked on down Turnmill Street and came close to Audrey’s peeling gateposts. I had intended to knock on her door and ask if Jack was there. I would be brisk and friendly but I would make it clear that I wanted to know whom my son visited after school and why neither of them had told me about it. Now I couldn’t ask the question because I already knew the answer, and I would seem to be spying on my child even if it had come about by accident.

I don’t like secrets, I was going to say, but a cold fingertip of memory pressed at the nape of my neck and I shivered. I hated secrets; Ted had concealed himself from me within the tissue of secrecy and the musty, guilty smell of that place made sudden tears sting at the back of my eyes. If I tried to confront Audrey now, with her anger under its thin veil and her air of knowing more about my life than I knew myself, I might reveal too much of myself to her.

I wheeled round yet again and made my way back towards the car. I felt cowardly in my retreat and also lonely, but this time I kept on walking. I would go home and wait until Jack appeared for supper.

While I waited I peeled potatoes and transferred clothes from the washer to the dryer. I sat at the kitchen table and wrote a shopping list, then turned on the six o’clock news but didn’t listen to the headlines. At last I heard Jack’s key in the lock. His bag thumped on the floor of the hall and his trainers dragged down the stairs to the kitchen. He went to the fridge and took out a carton of orange juice while I sat at the table and waited.

‘Hi, Mum,’ he said in the end, registering my failure to ask how his day had been and whether he was hungry. Then he looked at me. ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

While I told him he stood with his head hanging, nudging at the corner of the fridge with the toe of his trainer. ‘You shouldn’t have been watching me,’ he said.

‘I’m sorry it looks like that. I didn’t intend it to happen that way, but if you hadn’t been going to Audrey’s without telling me it couldn’t have happened, could it?’

‘No.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

He glared at me. ‘Because I didn’t want you to know, all right? I like it at Audrey’s. I feed the animals and play with the cats. We don’t say all that much, if that’s what you want to know. Audrey’s quite quiet. She lets me just, like, be there.’

Unlike his mother.