I saw no point in pretense. “I get claustrophobia. I’m frightened of being underground.”

The young Max and my father (if they had got this far) would have told me to pull myself together, to have a bit of spirit. Silver put out his hands to take my dirty ones and said, “Come on, then. I’ll get you out. Which way do you want to go?”

“That way.” I pointed behind me. “I’d have gone along the canal but there’s a dead person on the towpath.”

“What an interesting life you lead. Do you mean you found a dead body?”

“I found the policemen beside the body,” I said. “They were laughing.”

“The world’s a wicked place.” He said it with deep seriousness, then, “Does it help to keep your eyes shut? Pretend you’re blind and I’m getting you across the street. Trust me.”

“I trust you,” I said, and then, as I closed my eyes, “You’re Silver. You live at 15 Russia Road.”

He didn’t seem surprised. “Everyone knows me.”

Instead of putting his arm around me, he took my arm the way people don’t seem to anymore but just as he might have supported an old blind woman. “Right, we’re crossing the street now. Are you okay? There’s a bus coming so we’ll wait for it to go by, it’s a sixteen going to Victoria, I like dodging in and out of traffic, don’t you, the driver’s shouting at me and sticking up two fingers, not very polite, and here comes a fire engine, it’s turned its siren on, wee-ha-wee-ha-wee-ha-wow-wow-wow-wow, and another one, make way for the fire engines, folks, oh my goodness, there’s a truck reversed smack bang into a Volvo, what a mess, and the poor lady driver in tears, her old man’s going to kill her when he sees that fender, but never mind, it’s not our business and we’re across the road in one piece. How’s that?”

I was laughing by then, I who had been certain I’d never laugh again. At the same time, opening my eyes on the gray ramp, the pub and a cyclist dismounting at the barrier, I thought how little I had laughed these past six months. It was a wonder I remembered how to do it. Silver was looking at me with his head on one side.

“D’you live in Russia Road, then?”

“At nineteen,” I said, “in the basement flat.”

“That must be a bundle of laughs for a claustrophobic.”

“I’m sort of getting used to it.”

He nodded, not so much in agreement but as if he was beginning to gather the information he wanted. “The old fellow with the fluffy white hair who’s a teacher and the woman who’s a barmaid in Coronation Street. ”

“Streetwise.”

“They’re not your parents, are they?”

“He’s a sort of cousin.”