‘They’re up late, aren’t they?’ I asked quickly.

He sighed again. ‘Yes. I’ll try and have a good talk to him, anyway. Listen, Sadie, I’m sorry I didn’t get to the funeral. I know I should have done. But I really did have to be in Germany.’

Tony is an account director with a medium-sized ad agency and he travels a lot.

‘It’s all right,’ I said gently. ‘Ted wasn’t there and he was the one who mattered.’

There was another brief silence. Both children seemed to be yelling now.

‘Sadie?’

‘What?’

‘It may be the wrong time to say this. You won’t want to hear it, anyway. But do you think you might be trying to love Jack too much? Do you think he might respond if you didn’t crowd him so much? If you gave him some extra space?’

‘Extra space?’ I repeated. The words made me angry. ‘What kind of a tired old cliché is that? I love him more than the world. There’s nothing wrong with letting him know it.’

‘I know how much you love Lola and Jack. But is your need to demonstrate it more about you and your history than about them?’

‘That’s crappy nonsense.’

‘Is it?’

‘What do you know, Tony, about how much space I do or don’t allow Jack? You live out there in Twickenham, you see him every other weekend at the most.’

‘The series of events that resulted in this situation weren’t dictated by me.’

I bit my tongue, but in spite of my good intentions I still retorted, ‘I know that, Tony, for God’s sake. You can’t resist a reminder, can you?’

‘Look. I’m not reminding you or reproaching you. I don’t want an argument.’

But we were arguing, nevertheless. My relief at being able to discuss our son with my ex-husband turned to anger with myself for the waste of all our joint history and achievements. If I hadn’t run off with Stanley, would Tony and I be a solid couple like Caz and Graham now? And, more important, how much more comfortable would Jack therefore be, with himself and the rest of the world?

Even as I speculated, I knew that if I were to feel guilty for the rest of my life and regret my actions in every remaining minute of it, I still couldn’t undo what was done.

I wondered if Ted had been thinking along the same lines while he lay in his hospital bed and held on to my hand.

I would never know, now. I was never going to be able to talk to him or even hear his voice again.