I dozed again, and saw my son, mooching around these streets—his neighbourhood, and mine too, by now. Outside Lots o’ Fun he dawdled, longingly. He hop-scotched down the pavement, past the two derelict shops and the yard that sold reconditioned fridges, down to the chip shop to buy a Jamaican pattie. The same sun shone on us both.

I got up and opened the curtains. It was a grey day.

‘They stayed here a year,’ she said. ‘Until last autumn. And then we fell out. Quite honestly, Dezzy, I wasn’t sorry to see her go.’

We were sitting at the table, formally, eating poached eggs. She was the first woman I’d ever met who believed in breakfast. She made poached eggs the proper way: white, humped moulds—like flattened breasts, I would have thought, if she wasn’t there. When pressed with a fork, they yielded and spilled.

‘Gosh’, I said, ‘my mother made them like this.’ Then I asked: ‘Why weren’t you sorry?’

‘She wasn’t the easiest person to live with. She was always dissatisfied.’

‘Was she?’

‘She said it was me, but quite frankly I think she was dissatisfied with herself. She’d make these little remarks, I didn’t understand this, I didn’t understand that, I’d forgotten her muesli.’ She mopped up her egg. ‘Why should I remember to buy it when she’d been sitting on her backside all day?’

I laughed. ‘Sounds just like marriage.’

‘She said she could never live with a man, but I don’t think she could live with a woman either.’ She munched her toast, thoughtfully. ‘I’d been quite happy till she came along. Really I was. But then she told me I shouldn’t have been. I should have been changing my life. I suppose I should’ve been having two illegitimate children and living off the social security.’ She stopped. ‘That’s unfair. I didn’t mean that. I don’t know what I mean, she got me all confused.’ She picked up her crusts and sucked the butter off them. ‘It’s silly, but I miss her. She made me—well, see things differently. And we did have some laughs.’ She paused. ‘I miss the little ones too.’

There was a pause. Then I asked: ‘Did Edward have asthma?’

She stared at me. ‘How do you know?’

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘Just genius.’ I polished an imaginary lapel.

I hadn’t asked, yet, where they had gone. This might seem daft. But it wasn’t nice, to go on cross-questioning her about someone else when she had made such a terrific breakfast. I should be asking her about the Gas Board.

She told me, over our final slice of toast and dark, thick home-made marmalade. She worked in accounts. On Tuesday evenings she went to Portuguese Conversation classes, and on Thursdays she went bowling with a girl called Cynthia, who worked in accounts too.