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.

He had not been inside that building before.

Not once in three years. I have seen that man about forty times in three years.

In restaurants. At his house, at Christmas, four times. At an airport once, for about eleven minutes, because our flights crossed.

And never once here.

That was arranged. By me. Deliberately, over about four separate conversations, and I will come back to it.

And he stopped about four feet inside the door.

I watched his eyes go round that room in about four seconds.

The hall paint. The heater, which was on, because it was June and that building is cold in June.

And then the table — where there was a tin of soup, opened, with a spoon standing in it, because it was half past one and I had been about to sit down to it.