‘What are you doing here?’ I asked as I got close enough to smell the smoke of her cigarette. The tremor in my voice – an undulation in tone that echoed round the vacant space – infuriated me.

She gestured at me to sit down. ‘Just got off shift.’

I lowered my backside into the opposite corner of the window.

‘I love the rain,’ she whispered, looking out across the maze of roads, each lit by a lazy sodium glow from the street lamps. ‘Don’t you?’

‘It’s kinda pretty, I suppose.’ I wasn’t lying. Right then there was nothing cold about that rain; it was like a blanket beside us. ‘Do you come here often?’

She rocked her head back and laughed hard. ‘Is that the best you got, Ollie? I’ve heard some shit chat-up lines, but that’s from a different age.’

My face was on fire. ‘Sorry. I’m a dick.’

She shoved my foot with hers, then stroked my ankle with it. ‘Teasing you. Sometimes I come here after work. Have a smoke, think about shit. You know?’

‘Why not just go home?’

‘Yeah,’ she said, not meeting my eye, like she was using one word instead of a thousand. ‘What’s the hurry?’

I don’t know why her insinuation of a difficult home life made me feel good, but it did. I know that I’d guessed it to be the case, that I’d imagined her expression as she spoke of it would be exactly as it was now.

‘So which one’s yours?’ she asked, gesturing towards the estate stretched out below us.

It took a moment to get my bearings from our bird’s-eye position. I could just about pick out a distant television aerial that I reckoned was attached to our chimney. ‘I think that’s my grandad’s place there.’

‘You don’t live with your mum?’

I shook my head. I wouldn’t have minded her asking, but she didn’t.

‘And Dad?’

I laughed and shook my head. ‘Left when I was three months old. I don’t think parenthood was for him.’

‘Good old dads,’ she said. ‘So just you and your grandad?’

‘Yup.’

‘That’s so cool. I’d love to live with my grandad.’

‘He’s all right.’

‘Can I meet him sometime? You could have me round for tea.’

I only pictured it briefly and felt a sensation that was something close to claustrophobia. ‘Yeah, we’ll do that,’ I said, careful not to put any timescale to the plan.

‘Getting bad vibes off you, Ollie,’ she said. ‘Shitty day?’

‘I’m good.’ Saying it was a barricade thrown in the path of any conversation. I didn’t even try to say it like someone would if they were good.

She stared at me through her lashes until I cracked.

‘They’re all shitty. Proper shitty.’