He came in within fifteen minutes and sat down in front of the television. I made us a pot of tea and a plate of toast, and he devoured three slices of it with his eyes fixed on the screen. I tried to assess whether or not he had actually been at school all day, without asking questions that would make this too obvious. I knew, at least, that he had been there since the three days of bunking off, because Mr Rainbird had telephoned to let me know.

‘Hello, it’s Paul Rainbird here,’ he said. He had a nice voice, on and off the phone.

‘Is something wrong?’

He laughed. ‘No, I just wanted to let you know that Jack’s form teacher says his attendance is fine. And I wanted to ask if he seems any happier.’

‘He doesn’t seem any unhappier.’

He laughed again, and he had a nice laugh too. ‘We’ll take that as a plus, shall we?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Let me know if there’s anything else you need,’ he said, with a hint of ambiguity, before he rang off.

‘What did you do today, Jack?’

A shrug.

‘Did you have Biology?’ Biology was the only subject for which he had any enthusiasm.

He gave me a dry look. ‘It’s Thursday.’

‘Ah. Would you like some more toast?’

‘No, but I’ll have more tea, if there is any.’

Encouraged by the normality of this exchange I refilled our mugs and went to sit by him. The slope of his shoulders and his bony wrists made my longing to gather him up in my arms so strong that I had to clench my fists to stop myself. Recognising this by telepathy he sank deeper into his chair and drew up his knees as a rampart. It was one of the paradoxes of parenthood, I thought, that the demonstrative love I had yearned for as a child was utterly rejected by my own son.

‘So what did you do?’ Our conversations had deteriorated into a sort of contest to see how long I was prepared to go on asking questions and how effectively he could stonewall.

He gave an exasperated glance at the television. Then he sighed and slewed round in the chair to look me in the eye. ‘Actually, I hung out a bit at dinnertime with Wes and Jason and people.’

‘Really?’ A pleased, bright smile creased my face.

‘Yeah. I was telling them about cormorants.’

‘Really?’ The smile turned uncertain.

Jack sighed. ‘Oh, Mum.’ He sounded, all of a sudden, like Lola. He slid out of the armchair and picked up the precious pair of binoculars that Tony had given him for Christmas. He went to stand by the window that looked out on to the back garden and trained the binoculars on the roofs of the houses opposite. I should call Tony, I thought, and talk to him about the truancy episode. I doubted that Jack himself was giving anything away.