But when I feel the tears coming, I press them back the way I always have. I press the avalanche of words back too. ‘We’re fine, Dad,’ I tell him. Like I say every time. ‘Same as always. Work. School.’ I stop there, letting the silence open up between us. If I begin to talk about what has just happened, and what I’m thinking and how I feel, I’m afraid I won’t be able to stop. I’m afraid of opening up the door on everything else, on my whole sorry history. I did what I had to do back then, I made it work. I don’t want to unravel all of that now.

I make myself ask in return, though: ‘How are you?’ It’s such an effort to make my voice go up at the end.

‘Oh!’ Awkward laugh. ‘Well, you know …’

I do know. My parents don’t get on. They haven’t for years. I know it got worse after I moved out and I honestly cannot understand how Dad copes. Why he hasn’t left, they way I have. Finally made a fresh start for himself. But he was always too loyal to do that. Too loyal, or too weak. I think about the anti-depressants he takes. Those brittle pills he hides in a drawer in the spare room – my old room. The prescriptions he refills without telling Mum, fearful of her disapproval and the arguments that would ensue. I think about the olive branches he always holds out.

I know there isn’t much more to say now. I know where the conversation will go from here.

‘I’ve transferred the money into your account,’ says Dad. He keeps doing it, even though I’m ashamed to need it. I tell myself that the money is for Charlie. It isn’t for me to deny his grandson that.

‘Thank you,’ I reply, same as always. ‘I’ve checked and it’s come through fine.’

I haven’t checked, but I know it will be there.

And I know he and Mum will clash over this later – the fact that he called me. She will want to know everything I said, and he will say to her, why don’t you call her yourself? But she never does. Along the way, we’ve ended up not speaking, Dad in the middle, our loyal go-between. And I give him so little to pass on.

‘If you need any extra,’ he adds, ‘then please do just say.’

‘Yes, Dad, I will.’

Though I never do.

Now comes the point where it’s time to hang up. We’ve said everything, haven’t we, that we usually say? The opportunity to tell him anything slips away, growing smaller and smaller until I’ve let it disappear out of reach and it feels as if it was never there to start with.