Dan Porter and Sharon Pettigrew or Janice Long-shaw or Kathleen Malloney (there were other girls with whom he had clothes-wrestled during midmorning break in the darkened store cupboard of the chemical lab at St. Joseph’s Secondary School, Tottenham Hale, North London—but they were the more likely ones to have ended up in the same full-stomached condition that Jackie now found herself to be in) are pleased to announce their plan for life. Following their wedding in St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, Tottenham Hale (his mother’s local), Dan will take up employment in Baldwin Metals where he will work, on split shifts for £1.50 an hour, alongside his father in the dust-choking, earsplitting environs of the fabrication shed. They will be having only one child (the very same one that’s got them into this bloody mess in the first place) because, until a council flat comes up, they will have to live with Dan’s parents. Thereafter Sharon/Janice/Kathleen will be getting a job because otherwise they won’t be able to afford to go out to the pub together on a Saturday night. Dan would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Tottenham Hotspurs Football Club and to all his mates with whom he goes to matches, because one of the sacrifices that he’ll have to make is giving up his season ticket. From now on, he will only be able to watch those matches that are being televised—that is, if Dixon’s allows him to buy a television on hire purchase. And finally, once they have reached retirement age, the happy couple plan to . . . live off a state pension for a bit, then die.

To be quite honest, that scenario had been in Dan’s mind for a hell of a lot longer than the one that he and Jackie had formulated whilst polishing off the bottle of Chardonnay in the Central Park Diner. It was, in every way, his worst nightmare, and from his early teens had hung over his head like the sword of Damocles, heralding the inevitable progression of his life. He had been born in the wrong place at the wrong time, with neither prospect nor privilege.

So he decided to do his damnedest to avoid ending up like that. He kept his head down at school, both physically and academically, and watched as all his friends opted out as soon as they could with qualifications that suited them better for lives as mobsters rather than businessmen. When he eventually walked out of the gates of St. Joseph’s for the last time, he knew that the school’s enduring and hard-earned legacy to him was that he was coming away with both these attributes.