Brian, who had helped Kevin get the second crib up the stairs in September because it came in a box that would not go round the bend in the staircase without two people.

He had been in that yellow room six weeks earlier with his shoulder against a cardboard box and Kevin on the step above him saying lift, and he had stayed for a beer afterwards, and the three of us had sat in the kitchen for two hours and Kevin had done the thing he does where he gets a biro and draws a diagram on the back of an envelope to prove a point about something that does not matter.

And now his nose was evidence.

I looked at that woman holding a photograph of my three-hour-old daughter’s face up beside a telephone screen in a hospital room, and the thing I felt was not anger.