There were one or two of his teachers in the audience. That was amazing. You never really thought of them doing anything after school. You never knew about people, like you never knew how deep a pond was because all you saw was the top. And he recognized one or two people he’d seen in the cemetery walking their dogs or just sitting on the seats. They looked out of place.

There were a couple of people from United Amalagamated Consolidated Holdings, and a man from the Council planning office, and the chairman of Blackbury Municipal Authority, who looked a lot like Mrs Liberty and turned out to be a Miss Liberty. (Johnny wondered if Mrs Liberty was her great-grandmother or something, but it would be hard to ask; you couldn’t very well say, ‘Hey, you look like this dead lady, are you related?’)

They didn’t look out of place. They looked as though they were used to platforms.

Johnny found he couldn’t listen to them properly. The pock-pock from the squash court on the other side of the wall punctuated the sentences like a rain of full stops, and the rattling of the door bar was a semi-colon.

‘—better. Future. For the young; people of our city—’

Most of the people in the audience were middle aged. They listened to all the speakers very intently.

‘—assure the good. People. of Blackbury; that. We. At United Consolidated; Holdings value. Public. Opinion most highly; and have no intention. Of—’

Words poured out. He could feel them filling up the hall.

And afterwards – he told himself, in the privacy of his own head – afterwards, the day after tomorrow, the cemetery would be shut, no matter what anyone said. It’d vanished into the past just like the old boot factory. And then the past would be rolled up and tucked away in old newspapers, just like the Pals. Unless someone did something.

Life was difficult enough already. Let someone else say something.

‘—not even a particularly fine example. Of Edwardian funereal sculpture. With—’

The words would fill up the hall until they were higher than people’s heads. They were smooth, soothing words. Soon they’d close over the top of all the trilbies and woolly hats, and everyone would be sitting there like sea anemones.

They’d come here with things to say, even if they didn’t know how to say them.

The thing was to keep your head down.

But if you did keep your head down, you’d drown in other people’s words.

‘—fully taken into. Account; at every stage of the planning process—’

Johnny stood up, because it was that or drowning. He felt his head break through the tide of words, and he breathed in. And then out.

‘Excuse me, please?’ he said.

The White Swan in Cable Street, known for years as The Dirty Duck, was a traditional English pub, with a ‘Nuke the Gook’ video machine that Shakespeare himself might have played. It was crowded, and noisy with electronic explosions and the jukebox.