‘Don’t look at me like that, Max. It’s giving me the creeps.’

‘Sorry.’

Scout and Stan came out of her bedroom. We all stared at our visitor as if she had come from some other planet and not just down the road in London’s leafy money-belt. Then Anne was on her knees and all over Scout. That’s the trouble with not seeing much of your child. Acting naturally around them becomes impossible. And I felt a flood of resentment that I could taste in my mouth.

Scout should have mattered to you. Scout should have mattered to you more than anything.

Stan mooched towards Anne, tail high and swishing. He sniffed hopefully at her legs and she stood up, one hand at the base of her spine, the other fanning the air, her lovely, ageing face twisted down with distaste.

‘I don’t do dogs,’ she said. ‘You never know where their mouth has been.’

I picked Stan up and took him to Scout’s bedroom. He gave me a mournful look as I closed the door.

When I got back, Scout was showing Anne the junior boxing gloves I had bought her. In truth Scout had shown zero interest in putting on boxing gloves. She preferred drawing, or hanging out with Stan, or talking to her dolls (Scout insisted she was not playing with them – ‘just talking’). But I could see that she felt some nameless compulsion to show her mother something new.

So that this time she might stay.

They talked. Mother and daughter. I went into the kitchen and I was in the middle of making coffee when a great wave of grief rolled over me and sucked me down. The feeling gripped my throat and stung my eyes and made me feel that I would never move again.

Then it was gone.

I went back into the main room with a tray. Two coffees and an orange juice.

‘I’m not drinking caffeine any more,’ Anne said.

I was confused. But she loved her coffee.

‘I’ll get water,’ I said.

‘Don’t push the boat out on my account,’ she said, and that made me laugh. She could always make me laugh.

‘Do you want to see my drawings?’ Scout said.

‘Yes!’ Anne’s hand rolling over her belly. ‘Yes, Scout! Yes!’

Scout went to her room to get her drawings. Anne and I looked at each other. I could see the effort she was making. We turned our faces to the sound of Scout’s voice. Stan was making an unsuccessful attempt to escape.

‘No, Stan,’ Scout told him, closing the door behind her as she went into her room.

‘Dogs?’ Anne said. ‘Boxing?’

She made it sound as though I was running a crack den.

Anne moved slowly around the loft, as if checking to see if she had left anything of importance behind, and stepped on a stuffed monkey that gave an outraged squeak.