‘Mind your mouth’. We said that in what my granddaughters call the ‘olden days’ and I call my good old days. After an adult had told you to mind your mouth you were supposed to apologise. How can I tell you that I’m sorry when I still believe that what I did was for the best, for both our sakes? Now this girl, who looks younger than my youngest granddaughter, is telling me to mind my mouth as I make a pointless gesture with an empty fork towards the face I can’t feel.

‘What a stroke of luck’, that woman’s saying to her colleague who’s just won some money. Gamblers only ever announce their winnings. A stroke of luck, what a stupid expression. There’s nothing lucky about a stroke but is it today’s misfortune or yesterday’s misdemeanour that’s barred my words. I used to talk for Yorkshire and scattered around family and friends are packets of letters, proof that I used to write too. I can’t write or even dictate but I can contemplate what I might tell you if I were blessed with language and you with comprehension.

I’ve hardly ever thought about whether you’d learnt to speak, if anyone wipes your mouth when you dribble or even if you’re still alive. If you are alive you’ll be an adult, a man, which would be an achievement for the baby who wasn’t meant to survive infancy. I suppose you must still be alive because I told them I wanted to know if you died. I haven’t heard from them since the tenth day of your life.

When you were born people like you were called handicapped, simple and retarded. I’ve lived long enough to hear the terminology change but now I can’t even pronounce the words they use. They call it politically correct but that’s just a way for them to make the bitter truth more palatable, like when they call me a resident or a service user rather than an incomprehensible inconvenience. Now I’m the one who dribbles and the one they treat like a simpleton. Because I can’t speak they think I can’t think.

I would have paid the institution for your keep as long as was needed but the doctor said that once I’d signed the papers I no longer had any responsibility for you, not financial anyway. He needed a name for the papers so I called you David, it had been the name of my Pa’s brother and it was the only family connection I could give you. When I think about family it reminds me of home. I put you in a home, now I’m in one; there really is no place like it.

When were you born, 1930 or 31? It was sometime before the world turned itself upside down for the second time in a century, I remember that much and when a family name and reputation still had value. My mind can still find words and pick up memories but numbers and dates get lost.

When I told your father you were dead it wiped that winning smile off his face. Once I’d said it there was no chance of telling the truth. I went back to running the family finances and he went back to financing the runners at Doncaster and York.

I told my mother who was philosophical. Having experienced infant death twice herself she believed that sometimes these things aren’t meant to be. Now it’s too late to tell your sisters they have a brother, I haven’t the words to help them understand.

I can recognise the things I want to talk about; I can see their shapes and colours, sometimes I can even hear their names but when I try to call them they vanish. Words are like dreams they only exist in my head. Sometimes I wonder if that’s where you are too. Were you ever real? When I was lying in the nurses brought me daily bulletins and asked me if I wanted to see you once a day; they were pleased with you because you hardly cried. I hardly cry. The muscles in my face are as useless at expressing emotion as they are at forming words. If I could would I go back in time and make different decisions? If I had a choice, just one wish, I’d rather be locked out of my mind than out of my mouth.