My biological father gave me a car for my 17th birthday, then told my stepdad, “now he knows who his real father is.” — I wanted to humiliate him back, but then I came up with a lesson the whole family would remember.

I put in whatever is left at the end of the month. Some months that is four hundred dollars. In November it was sixty.

And I have not told Maisie and I have not told Hollis and I am not going to.

My mother knows, because I needed somebody to know in case anything happens to me.

Which is, as far as I can tell, exactly how this works.

And the fourth argument, in the August, which is the only time I have ever seen that man properly angry.

I had got clever by then.

I had stopped offering him money and started offering him things. A van — his is a 2011 and the sills are going. A holiday. Paying off the last of something.

And in the August I found out he had been quoted for a new boiler and had not gone ahead, and I rang the firm and asked what it would cost to just have it done.

And I told him I had done it, at his own table, pleased with myself.

And he put his mug down and said: “Cancel it.”

And I started to say something and he said it again, and then he said the thing I think about most.