Lola and Sam had got up, finally, and gone straight out to the pub. Jack was still in the kitchen, waiting for me. He seemed to have grown even in the last three hours. I noticed the pale knobs at his wrists and his Adam’s apple like a small bird’s egg protruding from his childish throat. His voice would start to crack soon and in no time he would tower over me, like Caz’s boys.

‘Did you talk to her?’ He was eyeing me anxiously, trying to gauge whether I had done it right and if so whether I was upset by what I must have discovered.

‘Yes, I did. Jack, what was it like, all that time you were staying with her?’

He chewed the corner of his mouth but he didn’t give even the ghost of a shrug. I realised with a sudden beat of happiness that we were going to have a proper conversation, one where we listened to each other and made responses based on what we had learned. ‘We talked quite a lot. She told me things.’

As I belatedly understood, Audrey didn’t treat Jack like a child. To lonely people, to Colin even, the distinction between one condition and the other isn’t so clear. I imagined Jack sitting in the back room at Turnmill Street with the debris and the peeling wallpaper, listening to Audrey while she talked and talked. Telling her husband’s grandchild all the truths that she kept to herself for so long.

‘They weren’t always things I wanted to hear, as a matter of fact. Like about Grandad and her, and the way they got married when he was already married and had you.’ He glanced at me, checking my reaction.

‘I know.’

‘But some of it was really interesting. About what it was like in England in the war and stuff. Children got sent away from London, with labels on their coats, to live with people in the country to be safe from the bombs. Did you know that? Audrey and her mother had two sisters who came to stay with them and they’d never seen cows before.’

‘Evacuees, they were called.’

‘Were you one?’

‘Jack. I wasn’t born until 1950.’ Then I saw that he was joking. ‘Very funny.’

‘Did she tell you about how she gave Grandad money?’

‘Yes, that too.’

‘That’s why I thought of giving her my share from his house. She hasn’t got very much to buy food or anything, you know.’

‘That’s a good and very generous thought, Jack. But it might be better to keep your money for when you want to go travelling, or to help you through college. I’m going to pay Audrey back out of my share.’

‘That’s not fair, though.’