I felt disappointed. I suppose we always hope that children will give us back the best sense of ourselves, the sense that the world has slowly rotted; that they will see us as capable people who can handle things more confidently than they can. Instead, just this flat assertion: ‘You’re a weirdo.’

I checked that no thick werewolf-hair had sprouted from the back of my hands; that I had not absent-mindedly donned eyeglasses with milk-bottle lenses or a mustard-coloured shirt with a hilariously large collar.

‘Why do you say that?’ I asked him.

He pondered a while longer. I stamped my feet to keep them warm and blew on my hands.

‘You say your words in a funny way. And you’ve got some funny lines on your face,’ he pronounced in his little London voice.

‘Is that all?’

‘Yes.’ He stamped his feet to keep them warm too. I felt a stab of affection as I looked at his ridiculously small feet, encased in scuffed brown lace-up shoes. One of the laces had unravelled. I bent down and retied it for him, then stood up again.

‘You’re a weirdo,’ I told him, neutrally. He turned quickly towards me at my echo of his own phrase, with an expression of nervous interest in his eyes, but he didn’t say anything.

‘You say your words in a funny way,’ I said, ‘and you’re extremely short. Your mother also tells me that you enjoy eating scrambled eggs, and that is the sign of someone who is badly weird.’

He sat there, watching me, not knowing if I was serious. I moved right away from him, towards the other side of the bench.

‘You terrify me,’ I said, wobbling my head from side to side in a fearful judder. That tickled him, finally: he began to laugh. His face creased up and he held on to the zipper of his green anorak with one hand to steady himself. His pale brown hair stuck up at the front like a hello.

‘Maybe next week, if your mother says it’s all right, I’ll take you to the zoo,’ I said, ‘Would you like that?’

He nodded yes.

I don’t really know why I hit on the zoo: that’s where divorced fathers take their Sunday children. At least it wasn’t McDonald’s, I suppose, But Eve liked the idea of me taking him to the zoo. Anyway, she said, it would give her a bit of time to herself: she wanted to get her hair cut, and have a look round the shops without Raymond clamped to her side quietly agitating to go home.