For a moment, he stands there, drawing breath in and out of his lungs, a pain in his chest that has nothing to do with his fitness and everything to do with the deep sense of grievance lodged within him. Turning back, he surveys the front wall of his house spattered with raw egg, yolk and albumen running over the masonry and glass. The front door next to his has also opened, and his neighbour in Number 16, an elderly widow, comes out. She closes the door behind her and descends the steps with her shopper.

‘Look at this,’ Anton says to her, as he approaches, still incensed. ‘Did you see those boys? See what they did?’

She casts a glance up at his house, then turns to continue down her steps.

‘If I catch them again,’ Anton says, ‘I swear I’ll –’

She looks up at him sharply. Her face is aghast. In a voice that is hoarse and exasperated, she tells him: ‘I don’t know why you came back here. I just wish you would go!’

The wheels of her shopper rattle and scrape over the pavement as she hurries away.

The anger in his chest is still there, but it mixes now with a rising sense of shame. The judgement in that look she gave him, the annoyance in her words …

He climbs the steps to his house, and sees his front door running with the congealed yellow slime. Inside, he fetches a basin of water and a cloth. He’s back outside on his hands and knees, picking up pieces of eggshell from his front step, when a young man on a bicycle stops at the gate, dismounting in one fluid movement. A small, thinnish man, his face open with interest as he wheels his bike with one hand, unclipping his helmet strap with the other. It’s a surprise to see him come through the gate, nodding hello and glancing up at the house flecked with egg, then looking back at Anton with an expression of curiosity behind his glasses.

‘Hello,’ he calls. ‘You must be Mark’s dad.’

Anton nods briefly, then turns his attention back to his cleaning. He has no wish to make conversation with this young man, no desire to explain the mess on the walls and windows. There is an awkward moment of silence, before the young man seems to give in, saying, ‘Well, nice to meet you,’ with an air of bemused resignation, then carries his bike down the steps to the basement. Anton takes another glance at him, sees a round coin of scalp beginning to show through the hair at the crown of the young man’s head, and feels a stab of envy at the thought of what awaits him downstairs – the music, the dreamy enchantment of the woman he’s seen in the garden.