It was like the night when I came back from dinner with Mel to hear the news about Ted. I groped along the wall and found the light switch. I jumped at the sight of Jack standing motionless at the head of the stairs. He was staring down at me, his eyes wide and dark.

‘What are you doing?’ Alarm made my voice sharp.

‘Where have you been?’ he countered just as sharply.

‘I told you. Having dinner. Where’s Lola?’

‘In her room.’

‘Okay, Jack. It’s time for bed now.’

He didn’t move.

‘Jack.’

‘So did you have a good time?’

The tone of his voice warned me, and I saw now that his face was taut and waxy with accusation. I sighed. ‘Yes.’

‘I asked Lola who you were with.’

Lola had known. I hadn’t asked her to keep my arrangements to herself, not specifically, because I couldn’t have expected one child to keep a secret from the other. I had just assumed and hoped that Jack wouldn’t be that interested, and even as I was making these rapid calculations I recognised the scale of my mistake. At Jack’s age I had been more interested in my father’s doings and whereabouts than anything else in the world, as a matter of self-preservation. Ted was all I had. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Jack felt the same about me.

But Jack surely wasn’t as isolated as I had been? Or so aware that his small niche in the world was precarious?

Another set of blind assumptions, I realised. I couldn’t know how Jack felt: only how I wanted him to feel. There was a big difference.

‘You should have told me you’re going out with a teacher from my school.’ He made it sound like some perverted act.

‘Yes, I should have done.’

‘I hate being treated like a kid. I hate secrets,’ Jack blurted out.

Of course he did. So did I. I knew the insecurity that untruths bred, so how could I inflict the same on my son?

I put my bag and car keys down on the table in the hallway and climbed the stairs towards him. He shrank back against the wall, his eyes burning and his mouth twisted. I was the enemy.

‘Jack, I’ll tell you everything. Please let me tell you.’

He was backing away from me, retreating towards his room. I followed with my hand stretched out to him as if I were trying to soothe a frightened animal, one of Audrey’s menagerie. Jack reached his bedroom door. He half sat and half fell against his bed, lifting an arm to ward me off. ‘Go away.’ He was close to tears now.

‘Jack, it’s okay. Listen.’