I pictured her lying in the bath, her knees two bumps in the foam, and knew I had never reached her. I knew how her skin felt slippery when she let me dry her, and how frail her shoulder blades were under my hands, and how her shins felt sandpapery when she hadn’t shaved them and how she would flinch away and remove my hand to her breast—I knew all this, and how she over-sugared her Shredded Wheat and over-milked my tea, and how she had gripped me sometimes at night with her face averted, and how she collected coupons in garages and then forgot about them—I knew all this and yet, standing in the shop that night, I knew we had never been friends.

Costas couldn’t be a friend, but he was a mate. He took me to the pub a few times but I knew he wanted to be back with his faulty radios or his wife, who was expecting a baby at Christmas. He was expanding the shop and had started a video club; most evenings I took a movie upstairs. I usually read a lot, I liked books, but nowadays it took all my willpower to get through a newspaper.

So I put on a movie instead—they all seemed to have Rod Steiger in them—and then I dozed in front of the TV screen, the way she always said I did. Nowadays she would have some justification, because I wanted to sleep all the time. I stayed up as long as I could, but some nights I gave in at half past nine.

Across the street was the shopping precinct. It was separated from me by the traffic, which hissed in the rain. At night the shop signs glowed and I pinned up a blanket. It was a big concrete precinct with walkways. I fell asleep early but I woke in the small hours. It was then that the man used to shout. He stood outside Mothercare and bellowed; his voice echoed. Sometimes a night bus passed, but nobody lived round here, it was the High Street, and nobody heard him. I tried not to listen; it only seemed a matter of time before I would be joining in.

But most of the time when I lay in bed, waiting for the clock hand to move, I thought about my son.

Two

I had a son, you see, but Eleni cut up his photograph. I’ll never forgive her for that. His name was Edward—not a name I would have chosen, but then I hadn’t been asked.

There’s a certain sort of bloke, when you ask him how many kids he’s got he’ll say, ‘Two, that I know of,’ nudge-nudge. ‘Two, to my knowledge.’ Just so you know he’s put it about a bit.

Reg, who ran the depot, he put it about a bit. I had never liked him. The firm was called Peckham Pride Coaches and there were plenty of jokes about the one pecker in Peckham that was always on schedule. I imagine this scene where some socking great twenty-year-old knocks on the office door and Reg says can I help you and the bloke says, ‘Hello, Dad.’ Or, better still, thumps him on the jaw and says: ‘Where the hell have you been all my life?’