I wriggle my arms from where they are tightly pressed against my chest, then slip my hands around his back and press my palms to his shoulder blades. His shirt feels cool and soft.

‘I’m sorry too,’ I whisper, then I pull away so he can see my face but I don’t let go. Holding on to him makes me feel real. Grounded. If I let go I’ll drift away. ‘I don’t know why I said that. I’ve been feeling so guilty and—’

‘Claire, there isn’t a single day I don’t feel guilty about what I said to Billy that night. You were right when you told me to be a parent and keep control of myself. You’d have thought I’d have learned that by now. I’ve already lost one son.’ He glances away, his teeth clenching as he tries to hold back tears. I pull him in to me, cradling his head with my hands.

His body judders against me as he cries silently. Then he coughs, takes a deep breath and pulls away, reaching for my hands, wrapping them in his.

‘I’m just so angry with myself. I swore that I wouldn’t be like my dad. I wouldn’t laugh at my kids’ ambitions. I wouldn’t tell them that a job in a builder’s yard was the best they could hope for in life. I was going to tell my kids that they could be anything they damn well wanted to be.’

‘You did. You’ve always said that to the boys, ever since they were little enough to have ambitions. Remember when Billy said he wanted to be an astronaut? You said there was no reason he couldn’t be if he just worked hard at school. You’d save up to take him to the NASA space centre in Florida if he passed his maths GCSE, remember?’

‘Claire, he was eight!’

‘But you told him you believed in him. You made him think he could achieve anything.’

‘So what went wrong?’ The light dulls in his eyes. ‘Why throw it all in my face? Why skive off school? Why turn to vandalism? Shoplifting, for God’s sake. I don’t think my dad did a great job bringing me up but I turned out okay. What did I do so wrong?’

‘You didn’t do anything wrong. Billy’s fifteen. It was a phase. He would have grown out of it.’

‘Would he? What if he’d started dabbling in drugs next? Or stealing cars? Claire, some of those kids he was hanging out with were dropouts. Eighteen years old, living off benefits, graffitiing bridges and running from the cops. He looked up to them and thought I was the arsehole!