On Father’s Day my millionaire son walked into my freezing apartment, saw the tinned soup on the table, and asked how I was managing on the eight thousand a month his wife sends me. I told him nobody sends me anything.

PART 4

Two days later he followed me to the pantry.

I did not know he was behind me.

He had been sitting in a car on that street since about eight in the morning, which he admitted later and which I have decided not to be angry about.

He had not slept. You could see it from four feet away and I did not ask about it, which at this point in the account will surprise nobody.

I was in the queue with my box.

The way I have been every Tuesday for three years. Between a woman called Bettina, who is about eighty and who tells me about her knees, and a man who does not speak to anybody and never has.

And he came down that hall in that coat, past about eleven people, and got hold of my wrist in front of all of them.