Towards the mess. Towards nobody in particular — the way they do at that age, offering you the thing they are holding because something has happened and they do not know what else to do.
He offered a stuffed giraffe to a broken bottle, in a corridor, while the four adults responsible for his entire life stood over him being the worst versions of themselves in public.
Bernadine saw it too. She mentioned it, months later, without my bringing it up.
And that is the image I have instead of the one everybody wants, which is my ex-husband’s face when the lift opened.
I can barely remember his face.
I can remember a child holding out a toy to a puddle of milk and glass because he had worked out that something was wrong and that was everything he had.
And the last thing.
In the May of this year a referral came through to my clinic.
A boy of twenty-two months, routine, from a GP in Brackwater, about his hearing after a run of ear infections. Nothing frightening. The sort of thing I see four times a week.
And the surname was Mallory.
I sat and looked at that screen for a while. Not long. Perhaps a minute.
