The pub on the next corner was boarded up, too. The buildings beyond it were low and ugly, whatever businesses they’d once housed long gone, sheets of chipboard rotting where the windows had been. Others had been knocked down to make litter-strewn parking spaces, not that there was any shortage of either. No wonder Josh had needed antidepressants – how had he managed so long without them?

She pulled in across the street from Legge’s and let the engine idle. As she knew now, these were the premises that the first brothers Legge had bought back in the 1880s, the sturdy Victorian two-storey remaining a constant as the generations photographed outside it elapsed. Every working day since Victorian times, a Legge had opened these doors, greeted the workforce, set about selling their springs. So much history, and then the older history of the city underneath. She knew from Dennis that this area had been the start of Birmingham, where first the markets, then the workshops had sprung up along the little river Rea that ran right underneath here somewhere, tarmacked over now, gone underground like some Brummie version of the Styx.

She’d been inside two or three times, years ago, before Peter was born. She and Rin had come to meet Josh for lunch one day; another time they’d got a ride back with him from town. He’d given her a tour, showing her the workshops on the ground floor where huge bits of machinery spun greasily, overseen by men who stuffed away copies of the Sun as they approached, and wooden crates of finished springs in copper and stainless steel waited to be packed for despatch. The offices were upstairs, a long room with six or seven old-fashioned desks, Josh and Gerry’s at one end, at the other the secretaries and the book-keeper who’d made a huge fuss of Lennie, she remembered now, feeding her pretty much a whole pack of Tesco mini-muffins.

She’d expected the factory to look shabby now, the failure inside reflected on the out, but they’d been keeping up appearances: it was the best-kept property by far on this stretch of the road. It was shuttered, of course, the grille down over the loading bay, all the blinds drawn, but the narrow strip of yard out front had been swept and the navy-blue paint on the door was glossy. Even the windows were clean.