A few of the many doctors we’ve been to over the years said there was a possibility he might grow out of it, but there had never been so much as a hint of that happening. In fact, there’ve been plenty of times I’ve been scared it might actually grow out of him. That one day I’d wake up and my son would be gone, replaced by a giant, faceless, victorious scale sitting up in bed demanding its cheese on toast.

Norman often said he didn’t mind his psoriasis, because he knew that after a bad bout of pain and itching he always had the next bit to look forward to, when the itch subsided and the tiny bits of pink baby skin started to peek through. At first it looks like just a tiny tear in the scale, but then over a couple of days the vivid fuchsia pales to a soft dusty rose and the new skin takes over. Jax used to say that every piece of Norman’s skin that peeled off was getting closer to the real him inside. Jax. Out there breaking hearts since 2009. Still breaking mine.

When Leonard knocked on the door of our room to help Norman run through his lines I could see he was visibly shaken when he took in the situation. It was hard to believe he could endure the front-line action of war yet be so shocked at the state of one small boy’s scaly body. After a few minutes of pacing and wringing his hands he pulled a chair up to the bed and resorted to patting the folded-back blanket rather than risk touching Norman’s skin and inflicting any more pain on him.

The housekeeper who brought us the half a dozen towels I’d requested took one look at my bare-chested boy and turned pale, stumbling over her words in her haste to leave.

“Extra towels are a pound each and...um, no going...no taking them off the premises.”

If she’d had any suspicions as to what I was actually going to do with them, which was not take them down to the beach and fill them full of sand but pack them around Norman’s body, infusing not only the towels but also the mattress, pillows and probably the walls with the scent of the foulest-smelling ointment of the lot (which he’d finally settled on), she might well have rethought the cost. Because, for me, it was a bargain and the best value we’d had so far at Premier Inn. I considered going on Trip Advisor and giving them a rating. Psoriasis friendly! Five stars!

I knelt down beside the bed and laid my head on the pillow next to Norman’s. He was scrunched over on his side in the only position that didn’t cause pressure on his left hip, where a huge lump had come up the day before Jax’s funeral. Over the weeks it had waxed and waned, but this latest development had seen it develop into an open-cut crusty crack the size of the Grand Canyon. I desperately wanted to distract him.