He ate his dinner in front of the evening news, the plate perched on his knees, and Godrevy on the alert for crumbs. He ate slowly, concentrating on the food not the TV, and when he was finished he took himself to the far end of the studio. Here was a work in progress, an indoor oasis he was creating for himself, and the very first piece he had ever made specifically to keep. He was working freehand, directly onto the floor, creating a mosaic pool at the base of the wall. He had decided, with a nod to Monet, to add a few waterlilies, and on the wall itself, a white-faced heron standing in a cluster of reeds. He wanted to bring nature into his studio, an area of tranquillity within the squall of his life. He slipped a cassette of Joni Mitchell into the tape recorder and settled on the floor beside the half-finished work. As the songs spooled into the room, his pool of blue grew.

People asked him if he was ever lonely, alone in his studio day after day, month after month, year after year. But he’d never been lonely, and certainly not in the act of creation: anxiety trumps loneliness every time, and work is the best cure for both.

He used to hope he would leave his shyness behind with childhood. But while his voice deepened and his body hardened and inches were added to his height, the shyness remained unchanged. He would take its temperature each year with his parents’ question: What do you want for your birthday? Translated, this became: What matters to you? He would answer he didn’t want anything in particular. But he always did. There was the year of the basketball and the year of the dog, the year of the sleeping bag and that of the oil pastels. Every birthday, Christmas too, found him wanting something, and every birthday and Christmas, in response to his parents’ question, the same dread, the same discomfort, and the same reply: ‘You decide. I like surprises.’

He hated surprises, but he hated exposing himself far more.

He managed at school because he was good at sport. He made the first cricket eleven, he played on the wing in the first football eighteen; he learned the role of the sporty boy and performed it well. It brought him friends and followers, it brought him protection. He was also a swot, but in a high school known for its academic standing, his retreating to the library was not considered odd or unusual. That he retreated for respite rather than research was known only to himself.