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.

A man who did one thing well for forty years. Who then did not do it, once, in his own hallway, with the envelope actually in his hand.

About four hundred and eighty separate opportunities. Each one about eleven seconds long. Each one declined.

And it goes further.

The senior residence.

Thea did not invent that. She did not lie to her husband about where his father was living.

I asked her to say it.

Four times, across three years, in four separate messages that are still on my telephone and that I read out to my son in that kitchen on the Tuesday evening because he needed to see them in my own words.

Tell him I’m settled.

Tell him it’s a nice building.

He doesn’t need to see it.