The preparations continued, and the father saw that the moment was approaching when the rabbit would be released into the run. He said again: ‘I’m telling you now, the rabbit will be able to escape from that run,’ and then off he went to work.

When he came back that night, the house was soaked in tears. The sobbing son told him what had happened. The rabbit had duly spent a few minutes enjoying its new run, amiably grazing, and then it had suddenly bolted over a cardboard box and disappeared. He had searched everywhere for it, in neighbours’ gardens and out on the road, but it was gone. And the father, although pained by his son’s misery, couldn’t help himself from saying: ‘Son, I told you the rabbit could break out of that run.’

But the son didn’t say meekly ‘I know you did, Dad,’ or simply let the unwelcome reminder wash over him. He turned on his father with something approaching rage, and said: ‘Well, if you knew it would happen, why didn’t you stop me?’

The father laughed guiltily, telling it: the boy was right, in a way. The father could have stopped him, but he hadn’t. The boy had never owned a rabbit before, or seen one escape, so how could he be expected to believe how easily this predicted disaster would happen? Yet if the father had actually stopped him, the rabbit would never have got away; his warning would never have been proved right, and the resentful boy would have despised his father’s bullying caution. And so, the price of knowledge: one lost rabbit.

But Titch – what good had it done him, to see his judgement proved wrong? In his way, he had even been right to laugh at the thought that he might end up in pieces after a row with old McGee over a packet of biscuits. For wouldn’t it have been laughable anywhere else but here? He was the sane one, really: the rest of us were the headcases, to expect such an event and plan for it, cravenly. He had thought the world a funny, benign place. He was wrong. His uncomplicated vision had now been blackened, like burned glass. Mine had been tested and proved clear. But none of that explained why a voice inside my head, coming from a patch of waste ground, kept repeating with sorrowful insistence: ‘If you knew it would happen, why didn’t you stop it?’

Every morning, I opened my eyes to the rhythm of the creaking floorboards as Phyllis padded towards the bathroom. She had a habit of clearing her throat loudly en route to the basin. I had long ago concluded that this was partly from necessity and partly a vocal tribute to the new day. When this emanation reached my ears, I shut my eyes once again.