“Yes, please. And some water for the dog, if you don’t mind.”

The mug is almost too hot to hold but I wrap my fingers around it anyway and the mild scalding focuses my mind. “Thank you. This is very welcome. I’m sorry”—nodding at Bailey, who is lashing droplets of water in a wide circle over the floor. “He’s not a tidy drinker.”

“They told me you visited Mum yesterday evening, and she seems much calmer today.” He gives a tentative smile. “Thank you. I don’t know what you said to her!”

“Oh, it’s simple. I realized at last what she was trying to tell me.”

The smile stiffens on his face. “Oh yes?”

That is all he can say, this man who knew this very thing all along, who had stood and watched his stricken mother try in vain to tell me.

“It’s the most extraordinary thing,” I continue. “She knew my late wife, Yvette. Yvette used to come and visit her. I think I mentioned Yvette to you at my party.”

“Did you? I can’t remember.” He starts to blink rapidly, so rapidly that his eyes are hardly open at all. “Gosh, so Mum and—your wife, they knew each other. You’re right, that is rather extraordinary . . .”

So he’s going to lie to the end. All of a sudden I feel terribly tired. I squandered a great deal of strength in my youth, fighting, killing, escaping, hungering, marching. Used up an awful lot in my middle age too, working, loving, mourning, fathering, and I’ve got precious little left over. Will I have to carry him, a deadweight now, over the line? He’s got to help me or I’ll never get there.

“Did you ever paint her, after doing those drawings?”

“Paint who? I—I’m sorry, I don’t follow—”

“Philip.” I lean forward in my chair. “Please.”

He turns his head away, and I see the tears filming his eyes.

In the north light she laughs at us. No, not at us. She laughs and we watch her. She’s sitting on the floor cross-legged, I don’t know where. Perhaps a room of his imagination. In one hand she holds a can of olive oil, in the other a piece of bread.

The canvas is framed, leaning against a wall.

“When did she die?” Philip’s voice is gluey. I think he might be weeping.