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comfortable accepting it. I guessed the fare was somewhere around ten pounds so I took a note out of my wallet and handed it to him.
    â€˜I can’t take that,’ he said. ‘No way.’
    â€˜Well, thanks a lot,’ I replied. ‘It was a nice way to be welcomed home.’
    He insisted on helping me out with my bags, then we shook hands. As he drove off he beeped his horn and waved.
    Out of the corner of my eye I noticed the net curtains of both my parents’ neighbours twitching like mad. Unlike London where everyone jumps in and out of black cabs all the time, my parents’ road was inhabited by people who only ever used them to go to or from the airport before or after a package holiday. My arrival in one when my parents lived so close to the number 50 bus route, the most frequent bus service in Europe no less, was a clear sign of wanton decadence.
    Verily, the prodigal son had returned.

nine
    As I stood on the doorstep, my finger hovering over the doorbell, it occurred to me that perhaps I should have called my parents to let them know I was coming home for a visit. And not just a little visit but one that would last some three months. I’d thought about telling them when I’d first had the idea but I just couldn’t bring myself to do it because it would involve me admitting that Elaine and I were over, the knock-on effect of that news being that their eldest son would not be providing them with any grandchildren in the foreseeable future.
    I rang the doorbell and waited. Even through the frosted-glass panel of the porch door I could tell that the figure approaching was that of my dad.
    â€˜All right, Dad?’ I said brightly, as he opened the door. ‘I’m back!’
    Standing on the step in his red tartan slippers, holding a small gardening fork, my dad looked me up and down suspiciously. I could see it in his face that my presence here was causing him some consternation. ‘Matt’s here at home,’ his face was saying. ‘Why?’
    â€˜Matthew?’ said my dad eventually, as if checking I wasn’t a random impostor.
    â€˜Dad?’ I replied, mimicking his tone.
    â€˜What are you doing here?’
    I wasn’t too concerned about the abrupt nature of my father’s greeting. He was a man who liked to get to the point and work backwards.
    â€˜I’m delivering milk,’ I replied, and gave him a wink. ‘Heard you’d run out. Thought I’d come all the way from America to bring you two pints of semi-skimmed.’
    My dad laughed and shook my hand firmly. He wasn’t a hugger, not even with women, but he did like to shake hands. Still standing on the doorstep he muttered, ‘You’ve got bags with you.’
    I nodded.
    â€˜Are you staying for a while, then?’
    I nodded again.
    There then followed a long pause as we took each other in. I hadn’t seen my dad since the previous May when he and my mum had flown to New York to stay with me and Elaine. It was one of the strangest experiences I’d ever had. My mum insisted on putting on her posh accent for the entire time they were there, and my dad asked my permission every time he wanted to turn on the TV. It was as if they were both on their best behaviour trying to impress not just Elaine but me too.
    â€˜Are you going to let me in or what?’
    â€˜Of course. Of course.’ He stepped outside, still in his slippers – a cardinal sin in my mother’s eyes – and picked up one of my bags.
    â€˜No Elaine, then?’ he said.
    He said this not as a proper question, because I was quite sure that he didn’t think Elaine was going to drop out of the sky, but more as a statement of fact. My dad wasn’t the sort of man to put two and two together unless he really had to. He much preferred to point out a two, then another two, and wait for me to say, ‘Bloody hell, Dad, four!’ which is what I usually did. But I didn’t do