‘I never said there was anything wrong. Sorry I asked.’

After dinner Jack retreated again and Lola went out to meet some friends. She had left the ironing board folded but hadn’t put it away. I did the obligatory brief two-step with it as if it were a reluctant dancing partner and finally managed to set it horizontally on its metal strut. I took the first of Jack’s school shirts out of the basket and began pressing a sleeve. The steamy smell of clean laundry instantly filled my head. The olfactory nerve is the largest of the twelve cranial nerves; smell is the swiftest as well as the most powerful of the senses. My eyes stung, then filled up with tears and as I bent my head they dripped on to Jack’s shirt, making translucent islands of damp in the white polycotton. I finished the shirt and began another but I was crying so hard I couldn’t see properly. I hadn’t been able to cry for weeks on end and now I was sobbing over the scent of clean laundry just because it reminded me of the way home should smell, of cleanliness and care and therefore security.

‘The ironing? Don’t do the bloody ironing,’ Mel said when I called her.

I sniffed, wiping my eyes with the back of my hand. I didn’t properly understand the tears, that was the worst part of it. If I had been thinking of Ted, it would have been different. But in the last month whenever he had come into my head it was with a numbness that cut me off even from the relief of missing and loving him. I thought with dry precision instead about our life apart.

‘Are you there? Sadie?’

‘Yeah, I’m here. Sorry. I really don’t know what this is all about.’ I could hear Mel at the other end lighting up a Marlboro and exhaling.

‘Your dad died. You’re grieving for him.’

I was going to say, I almost did say, ‘It’s not like that.’

Mel had told me how bereft she felt when her adored father died and that wasn’t how it was with me.

‘Do you want me to come round?’ she asked.

‘No. Yes, I do, but it’s late.’

‘Then let’s have dinner tomorrow.’

‘Lola’s going back to Manchester in the morning. I can’t leave Jack.’ I didn’t want to leave Jack, in any case. He needed me, even if he didn’t want me.

‘I’ll come to you. I’ll cook something for the three of us. Don’t be late home, dear.’

Jack didn’t answer when I knocked on his door. I called goodnight and told him to sleep well.

Lola saw Jack and me off in the morning and said goodbye. She would drive herself north later in the day.