‘I just happened to be passing,’ I said, ‘and I was trying to trace some old friends who lived in your street.’

While she boiled the kettle I looked around the room. There were photos along the shelves, and a flowery armchair with that napkin thing on the back to stop your hair getting it greasy. In front of the fire lay an overfed cat. It was like stepping back into my past. She had the Radio Times and knitting on the table; I bet she had grandchildren. Outside there was a communal lawn, darkening in the dusk. Odds on she’d never committed adultery with a man in a leather jacket.

‘It’s nice to see someone young,’ she said. I liked that. She gave me a digestive biscuit. ‘Someone without any bloody aches and pains.’

‘My back plays up sometimes.’

‘They’re off tonight to the Community Centre,’ she said. ‘Some bloody sing-song. At least I’ve kept my wits.’

I sipped my tea and refrained from smoking. My mother had always worried for my lungs; I felt I should behave. I stroked the cat and said: ‘I wonder if you knew somebody called Lesley who lived next door to you?’

‘Next door?’

‘In Talbot Close. She had a little boy called Edward.’

‘You mean Eddie?’

I paused, the biscuit halfway to my mouth. I put it down.

‘Did I know Eddie?’ she chuckled. ‘I bloody brought him up.’

The clock chimed. I jumped. It was a heavy mahogany thing; it showed 5.30.

I said: ‘You what?’

‘Now don’t get me wrong,’ she said. ‘He was a charmer, a real pet. He had a funny little mind.’

She dipped her biscuit into her tea and sucked it. ‘He called me Nan.’

‘Nan?’

‘Thought I was his granny. They don’t know any better then, do they?’ She picked up her teaspoon and fished the rest of the biscuit out of her cup. ‘He had a nap in the afternoon. Once he said he’d seen this story, it had been blown up through his stomach into his head.’

‘What?’

‘He was dreaming, see. Wasn’t that a funny way to put it? Then one day, when he’d had his sleep, he said a man was coming and he was going to take him away in a lorry.’

‘What man?’

‘Didn’t have a Dad, not that I saw. Didn’t like to ask. Men are so irresponsible nowadays, aren’t they.’

‘Are they?’

‘You got a smoke?’

Surprised, I fumbled for my cigarettes and gave her one. The cat shifted off my knee. I lit one for myself too.

‘What do you mean, you brought him up?’ I asked.

‘She a friend of yours?’

‘Lesley?’ I paused. ‘Not really.’ I always seemed to be saying that.

‘Mind you I don’t blame her. There was several of them there, you can’t tell, can you? She came in one day and started talking about women’s lib and I wanted to get down to Ladbroke’s because there was a race coming in and I hadn’t got the phone then. But there was no stopping her, was there?’