When I went to his house one Saturday, the TV and radio were playing the football, and sun-leathered adults were relaxing in pastel-coloured chairs. They were a tribe of people unknown to me until then, and moving easily among them was Moses’s mother, a plump, friendly woman. She laughed when someone told her, ‘Take a load off, love.’ Moses’s stepfather, a speckled man with hazel eyes, introduced me to everyone, then Moses and I went our own way, walking to the pool.

This was a place of spectacle and a fitting stage for Moses. He was otter-like in the water, diving and swimming with an easy grace. He drew glances from the boys as well as the girls and liked the attention. When we stretched out our towels to lie on the grass, he seemed to glow in the greenish shade of the liquidambar trees.

While the other kids stuck to their tribes, Moses and I existed outside the social order, or that was what I thought then. We didn’t have to pick sides. Did Moses know better? In line at the newsagent’s one time, we heard two men discussing Moses’s mum and her compatriots. One was Adam McDonagh’s dad, a surprisingly skinny man. He referred to the women as mail-order brides. The other man said he wasn’t sure they were, to which Mr McDonagh said, ‘You’re right, what they are is whores, the three whores of Manila.’ His friend observed amiably that Manila had more than just three whores, and both of them laughed until they saw us standing there, and then the girl at the till said, ‘Can I help you, please?’

Like this, the year went on. I rarely thought of Bea. I couldn’t picture her travels, could not imagine the places she was visiting. In spring, our teacher, Ms Lurie, said she wanted to teach us about life. She had us raise some chicks that had been hatched in an incubator. We housed them in cardboard pens at the back of the classroom, with a light on a timer to keep them warm at night. But one day my chick started acting strangely, jerking compulsively as if to look over its wing. The other chicks noticed; they gave it little pecks. That night, I lay awake in my draughty add-on room, praying that my chick would throw off its affliction.