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.

And Wade laughed.

He did. He stood there and laughed, and he said: “All right. That’s a new one.”

And then he said to my mother — not to me — “Let me know when he grows up.”

And he got in his hire car and went.

Ollie was eleven and he asked me about four times that night whether I was going to be allowed to drive it.

And I want to describe the next four minutes, because everybody who hears this assumes the driveway emptied straight away and it did not.

Nobody moved for a bit.

My mother had a tea towel in her hand. She had come out with a tea towel because she had been doing the dishes when the doorbell went, and she stood there holding it for the whole of it.

Maisie was nine and she was sitting on the porch step with a paper plate.

And Wade did the thing that men like that do when a room has gone against them, which is get louder and friendlier.

He clapped his hands once and said, “Right! Who wants a look?” — at nobody, at the driveway generally — and he opened the driver’s door and put the seat back and started telling Ollie about the engine.