Dad pushed the passenger side door open for me, and do you know what he said when I got in, Jack?

Not, ‘How are you, Snowdrop?’

Not, ‘I’ve been missing you.’

He said, ‘How’s your mother?’

I said, ‘She’s fine,’ because what else was I supposed to say? She looked fine to me. But Dad said, ‘Has she talked to you about me?’

I said, ‘No,’ because she hadn’t, but it didn’t matter, it set up the pattern for us for the next few years, where every time I saw Dad he would say, ‘How’s your mother?’ I would say, ‘Fine,’and he would say,‘Does she ever talk about me?’ and I would say,‘No.’Because she never did.

We drove around to where Dad was living and it was basically a run-down bungalow behind some lady’s house, and the old lady didn’t like kids, so later on I’d call her the old bag, but not to her face. She’d given Dad practically no furniture. There was a single bed with flannel sheets, and a TV on wooden legs, and one of those ancient toasters with the sides you have to take down so you can get the toast out.

I said, ‘You’ve got better things than this in the shop.’ And that was true because Dad had toasters and jugs at Olarenshaw Electrics and they were at least new, and all this stuff was old.

Dad said, ‘Yes, but this isn’t my home, Snow. I can’t bring my things here. I’m renting.’ And I said, ‘Why don’t you just come home then?’ And he said, ‘It’s not what your mum wants, Snow.’ I said, ‘But it’s your house,’ and he said, ‘It doesn’t work like that. I can’t put you and your mum out in the street.’

I guess you won’t be surprised to hear that it wasn’t long after Dad moved out that I came home from school and found old Russell Cooper standing in the lounge room and, you guessed it, there was Mum, who had obviously been waiting for me, saying, ‘Oh, here’s Snow! Come here, Snow, there’s somebody I’d like you to meet. You know Russell. Say hello to Russell.’

I couldn’t say hello to Russell, the main reason being that I knew perfectly well who he was – Dad’s employee, Mr Cooper from the bridge nights – and I had never addressed him, or any adult, by their first name in my life. ‘Russell’ had always been ‘Mr Cooper’ to me and I couldn’t see why that was suddenly supposed to have changed. But he stuck his hand out, and next thing I knew we were all sitting around the kitchen table with everyone feeling a bit sick.

Mum said, ‘I’ve made a nice tea for the three of us, Snow.’ And even though I knew the answer, like a smart-arse I said, ‘Isn’t Mrs Cooper coming?’

Mr Cooper looked at my mother and said, ‘Not tonight, Snow, no.’ And then before I knew it he was tucking a napkin into the collar of his shirt, like he was suddenly lord of the manor, and he picked up his cutlery and held it upright in his fists like some kind of caveman. Mum announced that she had made a meatloaf, which I loved but she only ever made on ‘special occasions’, and she served it up on a good platter, and she put the good salt-and-pepper shakers – the wooden ones with the pewter base – on the table too.