My wife left me with our six daughters for a wealthy man. Fifteen years later she texted to say she’d be at our oldest daughter’s wedding — and my daughter told me to let her come, because she had already prepared a special welcome for her.

I learned to do a French braid off a video on a library computer. I learned there is a difference between blush and rose and dusty rose and that being wrong about it at seven-fifteen in the morning can end a household. I did not miss a single school performance, and I want that noted, because for a lot of those years it was the only measurable thing I had.

They turned out well. All six. That is not down to me alone — Dot, and my mother while she lasted, and four separate teachers I could name — but I was there, and I was there every day, and that is the entire biography.