Ken’s mother had us every Sunday from the autumn of 1987.
Half twelve. Every week. Through two pregnancies, through the year I was doing the course, through the whole of the nineties.
And the sentence I never said is not I don’t want to go. I did not mind going; she was difficult and she was also funny and I liked her by about 1996.
The sentence is: Ken, it’s not a standing arrangement if nobody ever asks me.
That is all. Eleven words.
And I got close four times and I know when they were, and the nearest was in the April of 2001 in a car outside her bungalow with the engine running and both children in the back.
And what stopped me every single time was not fear of him.
It was that saying it would have meant he then had to decide what to do about it, and he would have done something — he was that sort — and then Sundays would have become a thing we managed, instead of a thing that simply happened.
