She shook her head, almost the first response that he had had.
“And another time I had to take him when he stood on a weaver fish in Cornwall. You’ll be keen to know what a weaver fish is, I expect,” he went on, gazing down at her, throwing her a line so she could keep up. “They hide in the sand right by the sea shore and if you step on them they sting you hard.”
She half listened, but it was as if she were still beneath the water, floating beyond his reach, so he kept talking, to save himself as much as her. He told her how they bought Michael a cassette player and one day found him threading his willy through the sprocket of a cassette of Old MacDonald Had a Farm (Old Madonna Had a Farm he called it) in the hope that talking about his boy, though it touched on old wounds, on raised red
