I asked about the photo of my apartment, the one sent as a warning.

He admitted he had forwarded my address to someone working for Gerald.

He said he had not known a photograph would be used to intimidate me.

I asked why he had done it at all.

He could offer no answer that did not end with fear of his father.

‘You had choices,’ I said.

‘I was the one standing in that store with seventeen dollars.’

For the first time, he didn’t insist that his circumstances were complicated enough to excuse him.