When I looked at the houses again, one or two curtains had been drawn open. Not Lesley’s. Behind me I heard the rattle of a milk float. I felt familiar with these houses by now, like you feel familiar with somebody you’ve slept beside. I’m not talking about sex, mind, but sleep. You’ve gone through hours of dreams and a change of light. I felt part of this road’s waking-up.

Then I thought: my son is more familiar with this milkman and this postman than he is with his own father. What’s the world coming to?

By eight several people had left their houses and gone to work.

One bird was still singing, I heard it in the gaps between the Oklahoma songs. I was listening to the tape again. Oh, what a beautiful morning … In one doorway, not Lesley’s, a woman in a dressing gown stood, a child on her hip, waving her husband goodbye. She lifted the child’s arm and pumped it up and down, but her husband didn’t see.

Lesley’s house needed a coat of paint. I wondered if she had rented it; this didn’t look like her sort of neighbourhood, but then I didn’t really know her any more. I wondered what the crisis had been, in Reading, and why she had suddenly left. I wondered if Barry had visited, to see his daughter. Perhaps he had come home and it wouldn’t be my son opening the front door, it would be a bloke as sexy as Elvis Presley.

I switched the tape off, so I could concentrate. The curtains were still closed. Now I was here I felt detached, as if I was suspended a few inches off the ground. I suddenly couldn’t believe that anything could happen.

In the next house to Lesley’s the door opened and two teenage girls came out, wearing school coats. One had a red scarf wound round her head. They walked away, up the road. I was freezing, from sitting in the same position for so long. My bladder was bursting. I wondered if Lesley was living with somebody else by now. A year had passed; anything could have happened. Why hadn’t she left a forwarding address?

At 8.25 a car came down the street. I hadn’t noticed it. I only saw it when it stopped outside Lesley’s house, double-parked beside the van.

Its horn sounded, briefly, and then, so quickly I hardly glimpsed it, the front door opened and a schoolboy ran out. He jumped into the car, it pulled out and drove away.