He walks into the living room. Months ago, she asked him to sort through the LPs and tape cassettes, and get rid of those they’d acquired on CD. Better he had done the job when first she asked, but now, when he’s desperate to please her — as if that might counter the far greater pain he’s caused — it can’t do any harm, and it’s the sort of all-consuming, mindless task to silence his worries and fears.

He has a new double CD of Handel’s Messiah, bought especially for this year’s Christmas, and he decides to listen to it as he works. His own largely unmusical parents always played the Messiah on Christmas morning, excerpts on a stack of 78s that later gave way to a double LP. It’s one of the few habits of his first family he has carried across to his second. Now he lifts out the first CD — he still marvels at this miniature technology — and slips it into the machine.

He settles on the floor and turns his attention to the shelf of records. He sings along to the Messiah as he separates the LPs into ‘keep’, ‘discard’, and ‘undecided’. He is totally absorbed in the task, but at some point he must have stopped, for he finds himself hunched in front of the shelves, his hands idle, and he’s crying. The soprano aria ‘He Shall Feed His Flock’ is playing. Come unto Him all ye that labour, come unto Him, that are heavy laden, and He will give you rest. Leonard tries to smother his sobs, and then he changes his mind, twists around fully so his back is pitched to the room, and lets the tears flow. The muscles in his neck ease; he feels stress escape in the wake of tears. At the same time, he’s aware of a bleak and pervasive sadness.

He is a man who, in a single day, can pass from loving husband to decisive businessman to sex with a stranger to helpful father. It’s as if he carries within himself an invisible machine, like a front-end loader. He’ll enter a situation, and scoop! The aspect of him required to perform in that situation will be plonked in the foreground, while the rest is left in the pit below. And then another situation, scoop! and a different aspect of him will be carried aloft and placed in the central position. Sometimes, and today is a prime example, he wishes the front-end loader would lift the whole damn lot of him, drive to a sea cliff, and dump him in with the sharks.