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off a house like finding a homeless man in a garden shed recovering from frostbite.
    ‘How long are you actually here for?’ Mum asks.
    ‘I’m not sure,’ I reply. ‘A while I suppose.’
    ‘What about your job?’
    It’s time to drop my second bombshell.
    ‘I quit.’
    This time even Dad looks up at me.
    ‘You quit?’ he says. ‘To do what?’
    I shrug and my parents exchange looks of bewilderment. In their world people don’t just give up their jobs to do nothing.
    Dad eyes me as though I am mentally ill, on drugs or possibly both.
    ‘Will they take you back?’
    ‘It doesn’t matter, Dad. I’m not going back.’
    ‘But it was a good job!’
    ‘I know it was,’ I reply, ‘but it wasn’t making me happy.’
    Neither of my parents is the kind of person who spends a great deal of time thinking about happiness. They are very much in the ‘keep your head down, get on with it’ camp and to be fair that has seen them through all kinds of troubles in their lives. Maybe if this had been a different time I would’ve been like that too. But I was born in an age in which happiness is supposed to matter even if you’re not 100 per cent sure what exactly happiness is and have to make yourself unhappy trying to find out.
    There’s a further exchange of worried glances but neither says a word. I can tell they both have a million questions but are afraid to ask in case I go off on one again. Finally Mum says: ‘You must be tired after all that travelling. Why don’t I show you up to your room and then you can come and have a bite to eat?’
    I don’t argue, even though I’m well aware of the location of the guest bedroom that used to belong to me and my brothers. I allow Mum to lead the way upstairs and follow with my bags.
    ‘You’ve decorated,’ I say.
    ‘I just gave it a little spruce.’
    When Lauren and I had last stayed here, the room had been little more than a freshly painted magnolia box but now the walls are adorned with floral patterned wallpaper, swags of decorative material hang round the windows, pictures of my nephews and nieces have been artfully displayed on every free surface and there’s a large Constable print of a countryside scene in an ornate gold frame on the chimney breast. The room looks like one HRH Queen Elizabeth might have chosen had she been evicted from Buckingham Palace, stripped of her fortune and forced to live in a terraced house in south Birmingham.
    ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ says Mum even though I can see she’s got something more to say. Given the circumstances I decide the least I can do is give her an in: ‘I am OK, Mum, I’ll be fine.’
    ‘I know you will,’ she says but the abject sorrow in her eyes says otherwise.

8
    I’m woken the following morning by a sharp knock on my bedroom door. I open my eyes to see Mum standing over me wearing her outdoor coat.
    ‘I’m checking to see if you’re awake yet.’
    I look at my watch. It’s just after ten. Given the bombshells I dropped yesterday plus the fact that she gets up at six in the morning every day it’s hardly pushing the boat out to suggest that she’s been lurking at the door waiting for me to emerge for some time.
    I sit up in bed. ‘What’s on your mind, Mum?’
    ‘I’m nipping to the shops and I wondered what you’d like for your tea tonight.’
    ‘Tea?’
    She nods. ‘Yes, it’s either lamb chops or pork chops because I’ve just heard on the radio they’re on special at the supermarket. Which is it to be?
    It would be futile to point out that I haven’t got a clue what I want for breakfast let alone tea, so I hope to bring the conversation to a close by saying, ‘Pork,’ very firmly.
    Mum pulls a face. That is clearly the wrong answer.
    ‘Are you sure? I’ve never heard you say they’re your favourite. Did Lauren cook them a lot?’
    ‘No,’ I sigh. ‘Not really. I tell you what, though, get the lamb chops. They sound nice now you mention it.’
    ‘I’ll get