And in the November of 2025, when all of it came out, I asked him why he had never asked over the years whether anything had come.
And he said: "Because you'd have told me."
Which is the most charitable sentence anybody has produced in fourteen months and which is also, I have come to think, a decision he made.
That man has lived in a house for two years with a woman who had a son writing to her, and he did the thing he has always done, which is leave the door open and not go through it.
I do not hold it against him. I rang the wrong person in 2023 and I know exactly why: because Rob would have said do you want to read it together, and Freya was the only person on earth I could ring who might make it go away.
I did not ring my best friend because she was my best friend. I rang her because she had a key.
