‘You are such a good boy!’ I squashed his cheeks in between my hands, turning his lips into the kiss-up pout of a fish. ‘Let’s move on to Greece: it’s cheaper there. We need to keep going – Australia’s a long way away.’

‘Yes to the former.’ He paused, chewing his bottom lip like he didn’t want to ruin our new season of goodwill. ‘You’re not really serious about Australia?’

‘Look at any map of the world. Land mass all the way to India, at which point we put Matilda on to ships. Simple, if you’ve got faith.’

‘Jessie O’Donnell, you are well and truly nuts.’

‘That’s why you came back, you great barmpot.’

The Alps

‘Snowy,

cold, empty, icy and bloody dangerous. In other words, they’re to be avoided in winter unless you’re the kind of person who likes jumping up and down with two planks strapped to your feet or, more sanely, to be cosily ensconced with your (nearly) toy boy on a rug in a chalet by an open log fire sipping Armagnac and looking out of the window on to their distant snow-capped, mountainous pomposity.’

In spite of Jessie’s protestations, we were climbing the Alps. After crossing the border at Menton, we had driven off the autostrada, leaving the coastal roads behind as we headed inland to satisfy my curiosity.

We slept in hostels, and one night we slept in Matilda, parked just outside Monaco, where accommodation was too expensive. Earlier, the gendarmerie of that Great Kingdom of Casinos had ejected us as ‘illegally sleeping aliens’.

After several weeks of tentative reacquaintance – Excuse me, but do you mind if I put my penis in now? Are you sure? Oh, that’s lovely. Here it comes – we were back on form and had shot up the coast to France and headed towards Italy. Thereafter we would go to Greece and thereafter?

I was learning to live in the present.

Yet I had also accepted that I was driving into a future I could not plan and into a past I could not control.

Jessie’s profile leaped out with such vitality as she drove against a backdrop of blustery southern European landscapes. I was able to stand back and study her these days, while I listened to the constant retelling of her stories of past woes and dramas. I sympathized, which was what she wanted. Yet she now seemed to fear my natural quietness, agitated if I was silent for too long. I realized that her endless chatter was supposed to keep me close, like a rein.

She still didn’t want me out of her sight. At first I didn’t mind.

God, did I listen:

All those hours, months, years,

amplified tick-tock of the clock

in my bedroom-cum-lounge-cum-kitchen,

while Terry was at school learning the independence

he’d use against me, eventually.

Jangling nerve ends waiting for the jarring