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.

“You’re doing exactly what he did.”

And I said that was not fair.

And he said: “I know it’s not the same. I know why you’re doing it. But you’re standing in my kitchen telling me what you’ve bought me, and I didn’t ask, and I’ve said no four times now.”

“Turning up with a thing is not the same as asking somebody what they want.”

And he was right, and I cancelled it, and we did not speak for about nine days, which is the longest we have ever gone.

And in the November he rang me and asked whether I could give him a hand moving a wardrobe.

Which is how that man ends an argument and always has been.

The other people in it.

Wade Ferris is fifty-nine. He rang me in 2019 about something and we spoke for about eleven minutes and it was fine and nothing came of it.

He does not know any of what is in this document. He does not know the car cost anybody anything. He does not know there was an account.

As far as that man understands his own life, he bought his son a car in 2013 and was insufficiently thanked for it, and I would put money on him having told that story at least forty times.