Without speaking, Silas sits down next to his son in the hut in the forest, wincing at the pain in his knees as he pulls his legs up and wraps his arms around them. The last time he sat like this was in the cubs more than forty years ago, trying not to look up Akela’s skirt.

‘I just want you and Mum to be together,’ Conor says after a while.

Silas closes his eyes. ‘It’s not that easy,’ he says.

And he doubts whether it would fix anything in Conor’s life if they did give it another go. His problems run far deeper. Mel blames him for not being tough enough on their son when he was younger. Silas tried to explain that it was hard to play the disciplinarian when you were feeling guilty about being an absent father, but it never washed.

‘Have you even tried?’ Conor asks, rocking more violently now.

Silas senses the anger beneath the surface. He doesn’t want to do or say anything that might provoke it further.

‘It needs us both to want to get back together and I don’t think Mum—’

‘Mum wants it,’ Conor shouts, interrupting him. ‘She told me.’

‘OK,’ Silas says, taken aback by Conor’s sudden outburst. He’s glad they are up here in the woods, far from anyone. ‘So Mum wants it.’

Neither of them says anything. Silas closes his eyes and becomes aware of a nearby buzzing. He looks up and sees a wasp nest in the far corner, under the green corrugated-iron roof. A mass of delicate, beautiful swirls, like one of the big brown-sugar meringues that Mel used to make with Conor when he was little.

‘When did she tell you she wanted us to get back together?’ he asks.

‘Yesterday,’ Conor says. ‘When I phoned her to say goodbye.’

From the train track. Silas remembers seeing the missed calls from her, the ease with which he’d ignored them. Was that after Conor had called her?

‘I heard what happened,’ Silas says. ‘And I’m glad you didn’t go through with it.’

‘Are you really?’

Conor is calmer now, more reflective, his body no longer rocking.

‘Of course I bloody am,’ Silas says. ‘What made you want to do it?’

‘You?’ Conor says.

Silas winces. It’s painful, like a knife between the ribs, but a part of him knows that he needs to hear this if the two of them are ever to patch things up.

‘My shitshow of a life,’ Conor continues.

‘If you’re in trouble…’

‘Trouble?’ Conor laughs. ‘I’m not a child any more, Dad.’

‘There’s always a way out, that’s all I’m saying.’

‘Not from this there isn’t.’

‘From what?’

Conor remains silent.