‘It was good, Mr Eastaugh,’ Gordon said. Fifty years old and he still felt a child before the club president, the big man of Bluebird. Tony’s hair, the colour of pissed-on snow, lifted and fell with a puff of breeze. He was wearing a frayed yellow BSLSC polo shirt and board shorts, no shame or long pants to cover the join between his veiny left shin and his prosthesis. Feeling sympathy for Tony’s infirmity and guilt for his uncharitable thoughts, Gordon shook off his revenant teenage surliness. ‘Ben had a fantastic time and even did some volunteering work.’ He hoped that this would earn some approval from Tony, who had devoted his life to volunteerism, outside the part of his life he had devoted to intimidating the crap out of young boys and conning investors out of their savings as the founding manager of the Bluebird Building Society Investment Advisory Service. There were so many unexploded mines in a conversation with Tony, Gordon suddenly caught an image of himself in some Cambodian battlefield, missing a limb or two of his own from previous missteps.

‘The culture of volunteering is dead,’ Tony pronounced. ‘These kids only do it for points in their Duke of Ed. How can they call it volunteering if they get something out of it?’

‘Ben asked me the same question,’ Gordon said. Another scoring punch for Tony. Ben had been a regular community volunteer as a younger kid, but what adolescence had started, his parents’ separation had finished off: he’d lost all interest, unless helping Lou counted, which it didn’t. Gordon was thrilled when, on the holiday, Ben allowed himself to be taken to the Beckham lagoon bush regeneration project for a couple of six-hour days. On their way home, Gordon asked Ben if he would do some more volunteering on their return, but Ben said, ‘No, Up North people do it because they care for each other. In the city it’s crims doing community service and kids who want to be school prefects beefing up their CVs. Everyone’s out for himself.’ Gordon had refrained from replying that Ben’s interest in the bush regeneration project had coincided with the presence of the boy he was interested in, so perhaps it wasn’t purely altruistic. He also refrained from mentioning this now to Tony Eastaugh.

‘Who are those weirdos who moved up there?’ Tony asked, accepting a cup of black instant from his son. Tony preferred instant, seemingly part of a broader statement of resistance against the forces of political correctness.

‘Rachel and Jason?’ Gordon said.

‘They’re not weirdos,’ Sam said. ‘They’re his cousins.’

‘Runs in the family,’ Tony said with satisfaction.