TPR still lived part-time in a shabby Sheffield terraced house. He bought it as a temporary measure several years ago when he moved to the city to join a new firm (which made him redundant within a year).

How anyone could live like this, I could not imagine. Since moving in ten years earlier, he hadn’t decorated a single room. He lived mainly in the kitchen, sleeping on a single fold-up bed under a 1970s patterned blue and white duvet. The whole room was engulfed in clutter because he rarely managed to put anything away after using it. The small garden also needed attention. After a decade of neglect, it was simply a patch of grass above which a limp washing line hung.

A and C understood the state of TPR’s living arrangements to be indicative of extreme poverty. So, whenever they came to visit, they arrived armed with ‘presents’ of A’s cast-off clothes and sportswear (wet-suits included).

Meanwhile I regularly wailed at TPR in distress. Why could he not simply sell this Sheffield property and move back home to be with me on a permanent basis?