I asked her why, when I was a child, I had a swimming costume with a back.
Because I did. Every one. Until about eleven, when I started buying my own, and I bought them with backs too, and I have never once in my adult life owned anything that showed it.
I had never questioned it. Not once, in thirty-five years.
And my mother said: "Your dad thought you'd get stared at."
And I said: what about Danny.
And there was a pause.
And she said: "Danny was about six when he asked me whether he could catch it off you."
Six.
And she told him no, and that was the whole of it.
Nobody sat that child down. Nobody explained anything to him properly, because he was six and it seemed like a thing that would sort itself out.
And it sat there for twenty-nine years.
I am not offering that as an excuse and my mother has not offered it as one either.
