David returned home two weeks later, unexpectedly. He didn’t explain why he was back so soon, but he carried a brown holdall that clunked as it hit the banisters and he often took his mother aside to ask her for money. “University took it out of him,” she’d say, to excuse his failure to get up. Or she’d say, “He just needs to find the right job.” He missed interviews; or he went to them, but forgot to wash and comb his hair. “David is too clever,” she’d say. Harold would nod in that easy way of his, and she’d want to shout at him for appearing to believe her. The truth was, their son could barely stand up straight most of the time. There were moments when she stole a glance at him, and she wasn’t even convinced he had graduated. With David, you could look back and there were so many inconsistencies that even the things you thought you knew began to unravel. And then she would feel guilty for doubting her son, and blame it instead on Harold. At least David has prospects, she’d say. At least he has his hair. Anything to throw Harold off balance. Money began to disappear from her purse. First coins. Then notes. She pretended they hadn’t.

Over the years, she had asked David many times if she could have done more; but he had reassured her. After all, it was she who had underlined suitable vacancies in the jobs section of the newspaper. It was she who had fixed the doctor’s appointment and driven him there. Maureen remembered how he dropped the prescription into her lap, as if it were nothing to do with him. There was Prothiaden for the depression and Diazepam to decrease anxiety, and then there was Temazepam if he still couldn’t sleep at night.

“That’s an awful lot,” she had said, scrambling to her feet. “What did the doctor say to you? What does he think?”

He had shrugged and lit another cigarette.

But at least after that there had been an improvement. She listened out at night but it seemed he was sleeping. He no longer got up to eat breakfast at four in the morning. He no longer went for night walks in his dressing gown, or filled the house with the sick-sweet smell of his roll-ups. David was certain he would find a job.

She saw him again the day he decided to interview for the army, and took it upon himself to shave his scalp. There were curls of his long hair all over the bathroom. There were nicks in the skin where his hand had trembled and the razor slipped. The barbarity inflicted on that poor head, that poor head she loved to distraction, had made her want to scream.

Maureen lowered herself on to the bed, and dropped her face in her hands. What more could they have done?