I would have what. Come? Helped? Been there?
He had my mobile number for thirteen years. It has not changed since 2009. It is the same number that was on every court document and every school form and every letter his solicitor ever sent.
And I said that, and then I went round him and out to the car, and that is the last thing I have ever said to my ex-husband.
Rafe.
This is the part that has surprised everybody, including me.
Rafe Farrow comes to my house.
It started with the Quiz League — they carried on, obviously, all the way to the May — and then it was a Saturday in the August, and then it was every other Saturday, and now it is most weeks.
Seren drives him. She has been in my kitchen four times and has had a cup of tea twice, which for two women in our position is a diplomatic triumph.
He is fourteen now and he is bright and he is extremely funny and he is, at the moment, a bit lost.
Because what happened to that boy in a car park in the May is that he found out that his father had two other sons and had lied about them for his whole life.
He has not got over it and he is not going to for a while.
And Dominic, who does not ring my two, has been perfectly present with him — same house, same school runs, football on Sundays — and I have had to watch a fourteen-year-old sit at my table and try to work out how both of those things can be true about the same man.
I do not say anything about his father in that kitchen. Not one word, in fourteen months. It is the single hardest piece of self-control I have ever managed and I have failed at it precisely once, and my own sons pulled me up on it before Rafe had even left the room.
And Ivy Sandoe, two doors down, who is eighty-one and who came to the finals.
She came in a taxi that she paid for and would not discuss, and she sat next to me, and when Cai’s mark was read out she took hold of my wrist and did not let go of it for the rest of the ceremony.
