‘That’s an understatement. Oh, God, Mum … you have no idea.’

‘Then tell me.’

He shakes his head. His eyes are bloodshot. ‘I can’t … I’m ashamed.’

‘Don’t be. No more shame. Only the truth, OK?’

She sits on the bar stool next to him and takes his hands in hers. She notices black tattoos on his knuckles, but she doesn’t say anything.

‘I don’t know. I don’t know where to start.’

‘Thailand?’

‘Yeah, there was Thailand, but I was smoking weed behind your back long before that.’

‘But you got your A levels.’

‘By some kind of fluke. Everyone smoked, but it always affected me more.’

‘But you were at school … at a good school …’

Jamie shakes his head and smiles sadly at her. ‘Mum, one sure-fire way to turn a competitive child into an addict is to send them to a private school. Especially an expensive prestigious one like that. That place was full of drugs. You have no idea of what I was exposed to.’

She shakes her head, reeling. How had she not known?

‘Then in Thailand the wheels really fell off the bus.’

‘I remember. You didn’t … I mean, I don’t know what you took, but …’ she steels herself, fearful of the answer, but now they’re being honest, she has to know. ‘Was there heroin? Did you inject?’

‘No, but it was everything else. Acid, MDMA, Skunk … loads of it. Every day. And the sicker I got, the more I needed it. I couldn’t see a way out. Everything was so foggy. I felt so lost. And when I got back, I felt that I was letting you down the whole time.’

‘You weren’t.’

‘I thought we were being honest,’ Jamie reminds her. ‘I was a shit.’

‘You were a shit.’ Maddy concedes.

‘I guess I pushed it to the point where you and Dad had no choice but to throw me out. I see that.’

She nods. It feels like balm to hear him tell her this. To know that he can possibly see it from her point of view. ‘I’m so sorry about that row. That it got to that point. I wish I’d been able to handle it differently. And, to be fair, you were right what you said – about me being always fixated on my phone, on my perfect life. Only it wasn’t perfect. I was far from a perfect mother.’

‘I said that?’

‘You don’t remember the fight?’

‘Only Dad’s right hook,’ Jamie said. ‘Which I probably deserved.’

‘Oh, Jamie.’

‘I thought that things would be OK when I left. And for a while they were. I met some good people when I first got here, but the situation was always fluid and we got thrown out of places continually. By the time it got to Christmas, things were bad. I’d met a girl by then and we moved into a squat in a derelict betting office. It had running water and intermittent electricity, but it was horrible, Mum. But I had nowhere else and no money and I was reliant on the food the restaurants threw out in the bins. And then I got Covid and was so ill. That’s when I rang. I should have left more of a message, but I lost my nerve.’