“Andy—” Marcus looked about the garden, as if for help. Two women, a decade older, were sitting at a picnic table a way over with crisps and Cokes. One of them caught Marcus’s eye and I saw her whisper something to her friend and they both laughed quietly. On Friday afternoons and Saturday mornings, I worked in Darren’s office, sorting out the timesheets and helping with payroll. There was a new computer program that would, once it was set up, calculate everything automatically, and I was learning it since the two women who worked there refused to go anywhere near it. Most weeks Marcus picked me up after football, often still dressed in his kit, and Jules and Karen were the same as these two, purring and cooing over him, asking if he’d scored any goals, telling him he was the spitting image of Michael Owen, and offering him Jaffa cakes.

“What is it?” My voice came out less friendly than I intended.

“Uncle Darren phoned this morning.”

“Yeah?”

“And he needs me this evening. He says it’s important. Some travelers have got into one of the sites. They’ve got a sound system. If we don’t get them out now, it’ll be rave central. Then there’ll be no getting rid of them. You and me can do something tomorrow.”

“There is no tomorrow.”

“Come on, Andy. Don’t be—” He looked at me helplessly. He had brown eyes. They weren’t like Peter’s, which in some lights appeared almost orange. Marcus’s eyes were depthless, a hardwood brown. I never wondered what he was thinking. But he was quick to put his hand in his pocket, and didn’t count what I owed him, and he drove us about, and other girls wanted him although he acted like he didn’t know it. “We can stay here for a bit. Get some chips in town.”

I told him not to bother, and on the way back I gave one-word answers to his attempts at conversation, relenting only when we pulled up a hundred meters before the house, at the spot where he always dropped me off. I gave him a quick kiss, since it didn’t do to push Marcus too far, got out, and watched him execute a three-point turn in the lane and drive off.

Our house was on the end of a row of farmworkers’ cottages. They were tiny, with thick walls and small windows. The council owned them. In the seventies, indoor bathrooms had been added on the back, but ineptly, with minimal insulation, so that in winter it was like trying to wash in the middle of a freezing field.