Harold checked into a modest guesthouse that smelt of central heating, boiled giblets and air freshener. He was sore with tiredness, but once he had unpacked his few things and inspected his feet, he sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what to do next. He was too unsettled to sleep. From downstairs came the sound of the early-evening news. Maureen would be watching too, while she did the ironing. For a while he stayed, listening without hearing, comforted by the knowledge they were joined in this way at least. He thought again of the couple in the restaurant, and missed his wife so much he could think of nothing else. If he’d played it otherwise, could he have made a difference? If he’d pushed open the door to the spare room? Or even booked a holiday and taken her abroad? But she would never have agreed. She was too afraid of not talking to David, and missing the visit she was always waiting for.

Other things came too. The early years of their marriage, before David was born, when she had grown vegetables in the garden of Fossebridge Road, and waited for Harold every evening on the corner beyond the brewery. They would walk home, sometimes taking in the seafront, or stopping at the quay to watch the boats. She made curtains out of mattress ticking and, with the remnants, a shift dress for herself. She took to looking up new recipes from the library. There were casseroles, curries, pasta, pulses. Over dinner, she would ask about the chaps at the brewery, and their wives, although when it came to the Christmas party, they never went.

He remembered setting eyes on her in a red dress, with a little sprig of holly she had pinned to her collar. If he closed his eyes, he fancied he could smell the sweetness of her. They had drunk ginger beer in the garden, and watched the stars. “Who needs other people?” one or other of them had said.

He saw her holding out the wrapped-up body of their baby and offering him to Harold. He wouldn’t break, she’d smiled: “Why won’t you hold him?” Harold had said the baby liked her best and maybe dug his hands in his pockets.

So how was it that a truth that could make her smile once, and rest her head on his shoulder, would years later become the source of such resentment and fury? “You never held him!” she had howled when things reached their worst. “All his childhood you never even touched him!” It hadn’t been strictly true and he had said something along those lines; although she was right in essence. He had been too afraid to hold his own son. But how was it that once she had understood, and then years later she didn’t?

He wondered if David might come to her, now that Harold was at a safe distance.