At the time, he’d been proud of all that working. And on the rare occasions that he’d been around to hear the other fathers’ commiserations, they’d usually contained an undertone of respect, as for one carrying a heavier load. At the Beast, too, there were gestures of recognition accorded to the new dads who took every extra shift going. Claps on the shoulder when you came in again, unasked-for cups of tea when you were deadened with fatigue, the chief even saying, ‘Not such a malingerer after all’ when you put your name down for every Saturday till the end of the year. That was what made it tolerable. Meanwhile Louise worked too, but not in the evenings, and went round to her friends’ houses, to the cinema, had a life. He didn’t have any friends left really, except for Max. His existence narrowed to a single imperative: the kids. It was almost impersonal, less a love than a duty, but there was love everywhere within it.

The one thing that actually hurt was when it seemed that, despite all this, he’d somehow still ended up a bad dad – one of those who’d blunder home, ignorant of their children’s days, only to interrupt the family life he’d paid for. The kind who were always the fall guys in children’s movies, like Mr Banks in Mary Poppins, who worked in a bank and was always at the office when Poppins and the kids were larking around London. He’d banned Elsa and Jenny from watching it. The film was especially galling because the Bankses lived in a stucco-fronted West London townhouse and he was sure they could have figured something out without needing to send the kids to the local comp.

But working for the girls, especially when they were younger, had lent purpose to all he did. Sometimes he would look at them with amazement and think: everything you’ve ever eaten, everything you’ve ever worn, every bed you’ve ever slept in, I’ve given you. Whenever he’d asked himself why he was doing it, driving to the office, shattered before he even started, the answer had been at hand. But now they somehow seemed to need him less. Not less money, of course, and they were still children, young children; but that insistent they-will-not-survive-without-you was dissipating. He could now picture the day when they would with blithe and necessary ingratitude simply grow up and out and away. And he didn’t know what he’d be left with.