"Selfish reasons," he admits, though that's only part of the truth, presented as the whole of it with an air of simpering self-mockery. "My mother is alive. I'm trying to decide how hurt my feelings are."

He is aware of the hypocrisy. Maybe absentee parenting runs in the blood. (Maybe not having any genuine parental figures makes the prospect of trying to be one paralyzingly terrifying.) But Kieran has Morrigan and neither of them particularly need him, and Alistair only lasted a couple of months before making some kind of effort, and it's different. Slightly.

He puts the soldiers down and positions the other toys with absent-minded care. It's more attention than a grown man should give figurines, maybe. But he isn't quite playing with them. It's fidgeting.

"But I really want to know, too. Was he always good?"