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.

It is the first thing in his adult life he has not been able to buy his way out of and he is not handling it well and I would not either.

He said something to me in that hall at the pantry, after, outside, by the railings, which I am going to put down.

He said it quite quietly, which is not how that man says anything.

He said: I asked you every week.

And I said: I know.

And he said: then what was I supposed to do, Dad?

And I did not have an answer for my son that night, standing by those railings in the cold.

I do not have one now, eleven weeks later, and I have genuinely tried — about four separate drafts of one, sitting at a table.