When he was a few months old, I came home from work and said her name, but there was no response.

‘Where are you?’ I called down the hall. ‘How’s Robert?’ I removed my scarf, gloves and coat. As I bent down to unlace my shoes, a smell reached my nostrils. It was sweet, horribly sweet, and slightly musty.

‘Kathryn?’ I said, but again there was no response. Leaving my shoes on, but unlaced, I pushed open the living room door. The smell became stronger. Burning. Something was burning.

She was asleep on our new three-seater sofa; Robert was in his carrycot at her feet, and his baby blanket was scalding by the gas fire.

I picked up the carrycot, removed the scalding blanket, and switched the fire off. I looked at my wife, at the blackness beneath her eyes, at the hair that was stuck to her cheek. She was fast asleep, her mouth hanging open, her head slumped down to her chest. I didn’t want to wake her. I wanted to let her sleep. So I opened the window a little and I left her there on the sofa.

I carried my son up the stairs and he didn’t stir. I opened the door to his room, and I put the carrycot down on the floor. I reached down and fished him out of his blankets. His hair, dark brown, was like a fine cap, tight to his skull. The skin on his legs and arms looked tight, too, filled to bursting point with flesh. I smelled his head, feeling the wispiness of his hair tickle my nose, and he smelled of Kathryn. He didn’t smell of baby powder or of any sweet smell of his own, but of Kathryn’s mixed odour of rose talc and gingery sweat. I inhaled the smell deeper, and then I put him down in his cot and covered him with his new Sooty eiderdown.

‘Where’s Robert, where’s my baby?’ Her voice reached me before she did.

When she came into the room, her face was bright red and still skewed from sleep; her eyes looked odd, as if they were staring in different directions.

‘Where is he?’

‘He’s here. Look.’

She rushed to the cot and gripped the bars. ‘What happened?’

‘It’s all right.’

She reached into the cot, but I put my arms around her and turned her towards me. ‘It’s all right.’

‘Howard, what – ’

‘Shush,’ I said, as I held her. ‘Baby’s sleeping.’

five

Summer, 1974

It was a lovely caravan park, Rockley Sands, and it was one of those weeks where the sun doesn’t stop shining and you wonder whether there could be anything better in the world than strolling through Bournemouth pleasure gardens, the band playing, your wife with her hand in yours, your son running on ahead.

I had the MG Magnet by then; Kathryn liked the leather seats. They didn’t get too hot in the sun, and that week the sun seemed to pour in every window, heating every surface. Each day we went on an outing in the MG, taking a picnic lunch with us. Robert was four years old.