‘I have to go to space tonight,’ Bobby told me. 

‘Oh, are you? That’s exciting! Are you going in a rocket?’ He didn’t have any spaceship toys out, but it was good to see him have a flight of fancy. Usually he was such a sober boy, even literal-minded; I wanted to encourage his imagination.

Bobby chewed his lip. Maybe I’d made him feel pressured to perform; he looked worried at my response. ‘He didn’t say about a rocket,’ he said.  

‘Who said, darling?’

‘The spaceman.’

I set him on my lap and he...