That was my condition and he kept it, although I could see what it cost him.

Not his mother, not my mother, not Brian.

We sat in that front room with the curtains half shut and the throw over my knees and the whole enormous thing entirely to ourselves for eleven hours.

And at about ten o’clock that night he said, from the floor, with his head back against the sofa cushion beside my hip: “I’m not going to say anything about it in case I’m wrong about how good it is.”

We were so happy that day.