Tom lay upstairs in bed, as usual not sleeping. The agitation seemed worse tonight, and he couldn’t say why except that his father felt close at hand. But it was not as though he was ever far away. He had come with Tom to Nottingham where he’d lived with Jill, to Manchester, to Edinburgh, to Lisbon, followed him to London, had finally taken up residence in the flat Tom shared with Caroline. Tom had hoped for a while that Caroline might be the one to chase him away, though in the end he realized that was too much to ask of anyone.

He had met Caroline when he was at a particularly low ebb, but this was something he’d never told her; it wasn’t right to make someone feel you were dependent on them, that you needed them more than was really acceptable. He sometimes wondered why she was with him—she was amazing, she could have been with anyone—but he wasn’t sure he understood relationships anyway. Why was anyone ever with anybody else? She had said she enjoyed his company. She said she loved him. They had been happy together for a while.

But of course, he was still his father’s son.

“You were very quiet this evening,” Caroline had told him a few months ago. They were walking to the Tube after dinner with friends, and Tom had not been in a good mood. He had felt, obscurely, that it was her fault.

He had said, “Didn’t have much choice, did I? You wouldn’t let anyone get a word in edgeways.”

He had seen the shock on her face and then the hurt, and had felt briefly pleased to have wounded her, while observing himself feeling this. Hating himself.

He remembered how his father had commented on his mother’s clothes, sending her back upstairs to change before church. He had said the colours were too bright, or that her outfit was ugly (or even “frumpy’, that silly word Tommy and Nicky had laughed about afterwards, because they thought it sounded like a pudding). Tommy had felt angry at the time on his mother’s behalf, but he had known too that it was her fault for not dressing the right way. She made things difficult when she didn’t need to. And Tommy had thought all fathers were like this, that behind closed doors this was how all men treated their wives.

As an adult, Tom had had to train himself to blame his father, not his mother. He considered himself enlightened now. He had worked hard and had learned to challenge every automatic thought he had. Still, though. Still. His father’s views lurked somewhere within him, coiled up in his guts like a tapeworm. It was his father’s voice Tom heard when he told Caroline she talked too much.