Yes, life is terrifying, he might have said. Or, Yes, but it gets better. Or even: Yes, but it is sometimes good and sometimes bad. Better still, in the absence of words, he might have taken David in his arms. But he had not. He’d done none of those things. He felt the boy’s fear so keenly, he could see no way round it. The morning his son looked up at his father and asked for help, Harold gave nothing. He fled to his car and went to work. Why must he remember? He hunched his shoulders and drove his feet harder, as if he wasn’t so much walking to Queenie as away from himself.
