My family asked me not to wear my uniform to my grandfather’s military tribute because it would embarrass them in front of the guests. An hour later a four-star general stepped up to the microphone and looked straight at the back row.

That is the closest my father has come, and I have decided to take it.

Preston and I are all right. He rang me in the January and it was a very bad conversation and then a better one. He did not keep his job because of any of this and he did not lose it either. Graham Stannard, to his credit, has never once mentioned me to him at work.

My mother and I are still working on it.

She has told me that she has sat at a great many tables in her life and said nothing, and that the night at the Ashcombe was the first time she noticed herself doing it.

Take the hat off at least. It’s Grandad’s day, not a recruitment stand.

My brother said that at the family table, with my dress cap on the chair beside him under his hand, in front of twenty-five people, including the man he had been trying to impress for three years.

That man had been sitting two tables away.