At around three in the afternoon he came out of his room and asked the question, and Carmen wrote it down that night and gave it to me later because she knew I would want it exactly.

He said: “Did he know about me?”

And this is where Carmen Abreu did the thing that I could not have done and that I would not have had the courage to do, and that I have thanked her for perhaps a dozen times and will keep thanking her for.

She could have said no.

No, sweetheart, he didn’t know, his mother kept it from him. It is true.

It is eighty percent of the truth and it would have been the easiest sentence in the world and it would have been believed and nobody on earth would have blamed her for it.

What she said was: “Mostly no.

Somebody in his family kept it from him, which was a very bad thing that a grown-up did.

And there was one time, when you were a baby, when he could have found out and he didn’t take it, and he’s very sorry about that and he’ll tell you about it himself when you’re older.”

She left the door open on me.