I was remembering some of the things that Dad used to try to cook when he was still on the booze and not coping, back in the days before Jenny came and sorted him out. One time one of his mates gave him a pheasant he’d run over in his van. He said that he’d hung the pheasant and that it was ready. My dad had been on a bender for a few days and didn’t know what to do with it. He just put the whole thing in the oven – feet, feathers, guts and all.

It was a beautiful bird, despite being a bit squashed from getting run over by the van. I remembered the shimmering greeny‑blue of its head and the vivid blood‑red of the patch around the yellow eye. Even the golden‑brown of its back was beautiful when you looked at it – millions of different shades from yellow to black and everything in between. And then the two long, proud tail feathers, with stripes like a railway line going to heaven. Anyway, Dad put it in the oven and then fell asleep on the couch. Me and Kenny were starving. All we’d had to eat for a few days was toast. Not even toast with butter or marge – just toast.

So me and Kenny waited, somehow thinking it would come out like a roast chicken you’d see on the telly. We probably weren’t seeing things straight because of the hunger. We used to itch a lot, too, back in those days. And I don’t think we smelled that great …

Talking of which, it was the smell that got to us first. It was rank. Mainly the feathers burning, I guess. Mixed in with the bird shit left in the pheasant’s guts, cos it hadn’t been cleaned, like I said … But because we were there all the time and the smell came on gradually, we didn’t really notice it.

We had no idea how long to cook it for. All I can remember is us sitting in the kitchen waiting for it to be ready.

And then there was a muffled bang from the oven, like someone dropping a heavy bag. I opened the oven door and black smoke spilled out. And there was a stench like a tramp had shat himself and then set his underpants on fire.

I turned the oven off, and me and Kenny ran out into the garden before the stink and smoke killed us. Ten minutes later, we came back. My dad was still out of it on the couch, but he mumbled and coughed in his sleep.

I took the pheasant out of the oven. If I hadn’t seen my dad put it in, I’d never have guessed what it was. It looked like some terrible experiment that had gone wrong. Blackened feathers, bits of inside, bits of outside.

“I think it blowed up,” Kenny said.