Shaken, he reaches across the passenger seat to open the glove box and gropes about among all the unopened bills for the quarter bottle of Famous Grouse he keeps tucked away, remembers that the last bottle was empty and that he threw it out. Though hang on, isn’t there a miniature somewhere? In goes his hand again and out it comes triumphant. He unscrews the top with his teeth and takes a swig but the whisky, rather than steadying his nerves, sends him adrift on a sea of memories he’d rather forget. In his mind’s eye he is in the living room at the tiny flat he shared with his mother all those years ago, waiting for the police to arrive. He remembers Amanda producing a half-empty bottle of Courvoisier and a couple of glasses, saying, ‘Here, let’s have a quick snifter, calm our nerves. I’ve got mints for after. It’ll be all right.’ His jacket was still damp, he remembers, even though it was early morning and he’d been inside for the best part of eight hours and she’d put it in the dryer because it hadn’t started raining until nearly midnight and they had agreed that the story for the police would be that he’d arrived back from the Mathematics Society drinks party at 10.30 and that whoever said they’d seen him later than that must have mistaken him for someone else. Earlier, when he’d arrived home, ragged and terrified, she’d stood by him while he washed his body in the shower and turned the heat up to stop him shivering. ‘It’s just shock,’ she said. He’d been sick of course. That was nerves. She’d said, ‘Oh, my darling boy, whatever it is, it’s best that you don’t tell me. Don’t ever let me hear it from your mouth.’ And so he’d had to sit with it pressing down on him, threatening to suffocate him, until after the police had finished talking to him, which, as it turned out, hadn’t been for the best part of a week. But that’s where his mind is now: that first morning after the incident, scared witless but understanding that his mother, without even knowing the circumstances, would come good on her promise and that when the police came she would lie for him.

Oh, my darling boy.