He left behind passwords. Transaction records going back four years. Invoices from three companies that exist on paper and nowhere else.
And a folder of emails between him and his mother.
The one I have read most is from the September. It is from Philippa and it is four lines long, and the second line is:
Starve her out financially and she’ll hand you custody to make it stop.
I did not confront them.
I did not beg, and I did not ring anybody, and I did not post anything anywhere.
I printed every single piece of it at the library, two pages at a time so the woman on the desk would not notice, and I put it in that folder under my mattress.
For three months I cleaned offices at night and slept on top of it.
And now, in that delivery room, a doctor was staring at my newborn as though he were looking at somebody who had come back from the dead.
