I had rehearsed a version of myself to bring through that door, a calm and neutral visitor who would say the right neutral things, and the rehearsal lasted exactly as long as it took her to look up.

She was sitting in a big wingback armchair by the window, a small woman made smaller by age, a soft cardigan around her shoulders, and when she looked up and saw me, her whole face opened like a window thrown wide to the sun.

“There you are,” she whispered, and her eyes were shining.

“There you are.”

I had expected, walking in, to feel clever.

I had expected to feel the small mean satisfaction of a man getting away with something.