David had to get out of the house, and Stanley Park might do. He even had the forethought to take some stale bread. If the ducks would eat it, he could spare himself having to eat toast which hurt his gums even for lunch towards the end of the week. In a way, he was sorry now that he’d thrown out that old coat and hat, for, if he was going to be one of those sad old men on park benches, he might as well dress the part and not invite muggers. Then he remembered his brown jogging suit. Just the ridiculous thing! With a sweater over it, he would be warm enough and odd enough to cheer himself up. But shoes. He wasn’t today setting out to amuse Diana and Constance. He rummaged around in his closet until he found a pair of old blue sneakers. He sighed. Why had even his sneakers been blue? He must have bought them for himself. They would do until he got to a shoe store.

‘Something for jogging, will it be, sir?’ the blank-faced clerk inquired.

‘They should look as if they could jog,’ David decided.

‘Any colour preference?’

‘Well, brown,’ David said, ‘Anyway, something to go with brown.’

The clerk glanced at David’s jogging pants and glanced away as he very gingerly began to remove one of David’s disreputable sneakers.

‘They belong in a museum,’ David said cheerfully, ‘or in a theatre costume warehouse.’

The clerk reserved any opinion of his own. He went off, leaving David to contemplate his one decently socked foot, for he was wearing a pair of brown socks Christine had given him for Christmas. He sighed. Christine was quite beyond need of him now, for suddenly she had not one boy but several bidding for her attention, and her hours on the phone and nights out had begun to be restricted, a step Ted was much quicker to take than Mary might have been. In fact, he behaved as if Christine were walking out on him, too, every time she went to a movie.

A father is a peculiar creature, David decided, and he is never so aware that he is one as when the children begin to leave him alone. As a husband, Ted suffered something of that quality as well.

The shoes the clerk presented to him were the sort he saw college boys wearing, thick-soled, brown, green-and-white-striped without any shoelaces. David could not imagine them on his feet, but the clerk patiently showed him the velcro opening and shoved his foot into it, wrapping the shoe round with one gesture.

‘Good heavens,’ David said, looking down at the foreign object so simply attached to him.

‘Will you try the other?’

‘Why not?’