‘Was he hurt?’ I asked, alarmed.

She shook her head. ‘He was playing with the dog.’

I looked out at the greenhouse, with its three panes of hardboard. My son did that. It suddenly hit me; I felt dizzy, and sat down again.

‘How long were they here for?’

‘A couple of years, wasn’t it, Jim?’

He nodded, and went into the kitchen. I heard a tap running.

She indicated the kitchen, and lowered her voice. ‘He only calls himself Jim because of Jim Reeves. His real name’s Arnold. I found out when we got married. It was on the certificate.’ She sighed, and lit a cigarette. ‘This place drives me round the bend.’

He came back. She said: ‘You remember Lesley.’

He nodded. ‘A pain in the arse.’

She giggled. ‘She’d sit here and give me these lectures about men. She could talk. There they were, at it day and night.’

‘At what?’ I hadn’t meant to ask that. Now she would tell me about their vigorous lovemaking.

‘Hammer and tongs,’ she said. ‘The fights they had.’

‘Kicked the bloody cooker in,’ he said. ‘What about my grill pan?’

‘We’re used to it,’ she told me. ‘The types we’ve had here, you wouldn’t believe. Ex-cons. Girls on the run.’ She turned to her husband. ‘That bloke who said he was a hypnotist. They came for him, too.’ She turned back to me. ‘Then this bloke hired a trailer, said he was in import-export, and when they broke the door down all these magazines fell out. Should’ve seen the photos—had a donkey in one.’

I froze. ‘Did Edward see them?’

‘Edward?’

‘You know,’ I said casually. ‘Their kid.’

‘Oh, Teddy,’ she said. ‘No, they’d gone by then.’

I relaxed. He couldn’t be looking at pornography at his age.

‘Why did they come here?’ I asked. ‘To Spalding?’

‘He had this job at Geest,’ she said.

‘Geest?’

‘The bananas.’

‘Never liked that Barry,’ said her husband. ‘Poncing around without his shirt on.’

‘At Geest, in the packing department,’ she said. ‘Then he was on the dole for a bit, then he worked at the swimming baths, as a lifeguard, until the cutbacks.’

Her husband looked at her. ‘How do you know all this?’

She shrugged. ‘Lesley told me.’

‘What was she doing?’ I asked. ‘Where did, er, Teddy go to school?’

‘She tried to set up this business doing horoscopes. She put cards in the newsagent’s.’ Shirley indicated her husband. ‘She said he was a Scorpio, so that made him sex-mad.’ She sighed. ‘She wasn’t much good at horoscopes. And there she was, going on to me about financial blooming independence.’

‘What was their kid like? Teddy?’

‘Smashing,’ she said.

‘Smashing’s the word,’ said her husband.

‘He was just a kid, Jim.’ She turned to me. ‘He was great to have around. A real laugh.’ She paused. ‘Livened the place up.’

I sat still for a moment, taking this in. But I couldn’t just sit there, doing nothing. ‘When did they leave?’ I asked.