‘It just… came out. And when it did - even when I realized that it could be the thing that saved me - I felt awful. But then I thought maybe you’d forgive me,’ he says. ‘I’d spent almost thirty years being someone I wasn’t, for you. So maybe you wouldn’t mind spending a week being someone you weren’t, for me.’

I do not tell my father about the memories I’ve had of Victor; memories that were never heard in the courtroom; memories that would validate his intuition from so long ago. I don’t think about what I know, and what I’ve painted over in my mind. There isn’t one truth, there are dozens. The challenge is getting everyone to agree on one version.

So I ask the only question, really, that’s left. ‘Then why did you take me?’

My father looks at me. ‘Because,’ he says simply, ‘you asked.’

I am sitting in the front of the car, with my toes up on the dashboard. I close my eyes so the ribbon road in front of us vanishes, and I pretend it would be this easy to disappear. Please Daddy, I say. Don’t take me home yet.

When I open my eyes, it has started to rain. Fingers drum on the roof, and I roll up the windows of the car. What if it turns out that a life isn’t defined by who you belong to our where you came from, by what you wished for or whom you’ve lost, but instead by the moments you spend getting from each of these places to the next.

I glance at my father and ask him the question he asked me exactly a lifetime ago. ‘Where would you go, if you could go anywhere?’

His smile lights me. I drive east, toward Sophie, toward home. I follow a procession of telephone poles that stand with their arms outstretched, marching toward the horizon line. They keep going, you know. Even when you can’t see where they’re headed.