What he had never once in his life had to do — because his mother had arranged it that way from the time he was a child — was stay in a room with something that could be fixed by asking one uncomfortable question out loud.

A bathroom floor asks nothing of you but your presence.

A corridor at two in the afternoon with a photograph on your telephone and your mother’s voice in your ear asks you to turn round and say: Mom, who took this picture, and who else was at the table?

He could do the first one for an hour without being asked.

He could not do the second one for nine seconds.