I look for money, but this is one secret the flat does not yield. There are coins on a shelf in the bedroom, but they don’t add up to anything significant. I can’t find real money—an amount that would make his life easier in jail. I search half-heartedly for a safe, but I’m not sure what I would do with one if I found it. I don’t know the code. We don’t have that kind of relationship. I have a key to my father’s flat only on the understanding that I never use it. If he gave me a code for his safe, he would have to change it afterwards.

What could he have meant by money? I can’t ask him, because I don’t think you can phone the police station and ask to speak to a prisoner.

Then I realise he meant that I should bring him money—my own money.

There is a part of me that protests against my compliance with these requests. Why should I help him? He is accused of doing something truly dreadful. Do I owe him filial obedience?

Objectively, I know I don’t, but it seems petty to refuse to do this small thing for him. So I will take his cigarettes and his books. But will I also give him money? My money?

I will decide later.

I throw the bread roll in the bin and wipe crumbs off the kitchen counter. I put the plate in the dishwasher. I consider giving the toilet a quick swirl with detergent, but that is a bridge too far. The impulse in me to regard the housework as my duty is astonishingly strong. I am in the house of a male relative, and as such am powerfully inclined to regard it as my province to clean and care for it.

Not to do so seems sluttish and neglectful. I bustle into the bathroom, filled with housewifely fervour. There is a bottle of detergent in the cupboard and a toilet brush next to the toilet. I squeeze a line of detergent under the rim and around the toilet bowl. Then I stand with my forehead resting against the wall and the smell of ammonia in my nostrils.

I turn my head as someone walks into the bathroom.

It is the girl child. This is the happy, carefree child I met at the house in Worcester, not the troubled, questioning one who visited me at my home.

“Why do you hesitate?” she asks. “Why do you not clean the traces of your father from the lavatory bowl?”

“He did a bad thing to me. A terrible thing.”

“That doesn’t absolve you of your duty. I would do it if I were in your position.”

“Here, then. Take it.” I hold the toilet brush out to her.