Annie had never missed a prison visit to see her son, but Callum had refused every invitation, though she pressed him.

‘Callum, do you not want to be seeing your brother, just for five minutes?’ she would say. ‘’Tis shocking and shameful if you don’t, and I’d gladly give up one of my visits so that he could see his brother for a change. There’s no news I have that he is interested in, but you, you have it all.’

Callum was resolute. ‘I’ll see him when he’s out, Mam, and not before. I will never walk through those doors again.’

Annie knew better than to push Callum, and besides, she really did not want to relinquish even one visit to her son. ‘I suppose it’s just as well; no one can tell you two apart and they might keep you in, thinking you’re our Jimmy.’ At this point, Annie would chuckle to herself, but there were no smiles from Callum, just a shiver that ran down his spine.

‘You want me to work down on the docks? Where Da died?’ Jimmy said now. ‘You think I’m going down there to wait for a crane hook to knock me on the head? Are you mad? I’m not working down the bleeding docks, now or ever. It’s a death sentence.’

The sound of the bus pulling into the bus stop turned their heads.

‘The bus, quick,’ said Callum.

‘I’ll race you,’ said Jimmy, grinning.

Callum let him win and they leapt onto the platform and swung around the pole, just as they always had as boys. They gripped the chrome bar and watched as the tall and forbidding wall of the prison receded into the distance. Jimmy grabbed the pole with both hands and leant backwards out into the fresh air as Callum grabbed his cap and saved it before it fell into the road.

‘Feck, it’s bloody fantastic to be free and out of that shitehole of a place,’ Jimmy shouted up to the sky.

The conductor approached them with his ticket machine banging on one thigh, the saddlebag for collecting the money on the other. ‘Language, please. We have ladies travelling on the lower deck.’

‘Dock Road, please,’ said Callum, taking a ten-shilling note out of his pocket. The conductor took it and, lifting his money bag up from the bottom, shook the change until the coins he wanted shuffled up to the top. ‘Ah, there you are, the half-crowns always slip to the bottom. You’re the big fella today, then,’ said the conductor, ‘flashing the brown one.’ He smiled and handed Callum the change, as Callum slipped the tickets into his pocket. ‘Don’t lose those,’ the conductor said. ‘The inspector gets on in two stops, and you,’ he pointed towards Jimmy, ‘swear on my bus again and you’re off.’