Did my son love Barry? I wanted him not to, of course. Like a damsel in distress, he was waiting for the real thing: me. I was the hero of a magazine; I was poised to arrive in Spalding, in all my glory, and sweep him off his feet.

And yet part of me was nicer than this. I loved this unknown boy enough to wish on him a happy childhood, loving a man like I’d loved my father. This was soft; I blamed the drink. But I couldn’t bear this Barry to be a creep; I wanted him just nice enough to have made Edward happy, but not as happy as I could make him.

Upstairs they were quarrelling. They had been talking in their bedroom all this time but I had closed my ears to the rising murmurs and thuds. My parents had never quarrelled. I had lain in my room, next to theirs, and heard silence. In fact, they were silent most of the time. They were content, that’s why.

I heard faint footsteps on the stairs. I was half-asleep. As light as a feather, said the butcher. I would never know the boy he had lifted—Terence, who would still be in a wheelchair now, wherever he was. I wished I could get him out of my mind.

Fingers touched my lips. I opened my eyes. The little girl was standing there, spectral in her nightie. Her face grew closer; I smelt spearmint.

‘Your teeth are yellow,’ she said. Her finger was pushing my gums back. ‘That’s plaque. Why are you so old?’

‘I’m not old.’

‘Why are you wearing Dad’s shirt?’

‘I haven’t got anything else.’

‘Why not?’ she asked.

‘I’ve got nobody to look after me.’ My eyes moistened with self-pity. Or perhaps it was the sight of her in her little white nightie.

‘I’ve got a friend called Alice. Have you got a best friend?’

I shook my head. ‘Nope.’ I heard a thud, from upstairs. I wondered what had happened to the girl in the Bed and Breakfast. Why couldn’t men and women be friends? She said: ‘I’m looking for Kanga.’

‘He’s here.’ I leaned over and picked him up from the floor.

‘It’s not a he, it’s a she.’

Abruptly, she took the kangaroo and left me.

I think I slept then. I was on a beach that I knew was Spalding, even though I also knew that Spalding wasn’t near the sea. There was the old woman in the sequined jacket; she was searching for something. She called herself my mother but she was too skinny—my mother’s legs were fat, I had realized that quite recently. She said: ‘Someone here is making a sandcastle. They must be. I’ll close my eyes and count to ten.’ She wandered down the beach, waving her handbag, and called ‘Cooee!’ When she left I saw the sand move, and a child pushed up his face. He had been buried, and his eyes and mouth were clogged. The sand below him, where his body was, stirred. He was getting to his feet. I watched the sand falling off him, and I then realized that Piff was standing at the Aga.