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.

Thea sat opposite me for three of those days. She offered, and I said yes.

Saying yes to that offer is the only genuinely new thing I have done in ten years and it took me about four seconds and I have thought about those four seconds a good deal since.

There were other things in those boxes.

Not just statements.

Four letters from the bank about a dormant arrangement, going back to 2017, each one more polite than the last.

A refund of something in 2018 that I never claimed.

And a card. From a woman at the branch on Fullerton, written in the January of 2016, who had known Marianne for about eleven years across a counter — four handwritten lines about her, signed, with a first name.

I would like that woman to know that her card was read.