He nodded but he looked like he wanted to run in the other direction. I steered him round towards the entrance and he kept shaking his head, hitting the side of it like he was trying to get water out of his ear after swimming. I pretended not to notice. I dropped the newspaper back on the bench on the way in. I didn’t mention the football, even though I was dying to talk to someone about it all, the UEFA ban and the death toll and the shame of it. But I’d seen how he was at matches. I was scared of what he’d have to say. So we walked over to the lift in silence and I couldn’t stop thinking about Joe Fagan, crying on the pitch in Belgium, not believing his own eyes, pleading with the fans and sounding like some bullies had ruined his birthday party: ‘This is a football match,’ he said, ‘it’s my last game as manager and you’re spoiling it.’

It’s all about Alex now. After tea we fill him full of cake and ice cream because that’s what grandparents are for and we let him loose under the table, round our feet, playing with Karen’s old toys. We sit there licking our fingers, trying to pick up the last few crumbs from the plates.

‘I don’t think he’s coming back,’ May says, ‘not if he’s in so much trouble.’

‘Karen says they had a row.’

‘There’s more to it than that. He’s taken everything. She came back from work and he’d completely cleared his stuff.’

‘He was never a very hands-on father.’

‘No. But still.’

Alex was pulling the plastic Fisher Price train, trying to re-couple a carriage that had tipped and come loose. Filling it too full of little uniform people with their plastic heads and moulded solid bodies.

‘Billy said something once, at the match.’ I said.

‘What?’

‘He said he saw Ian in the toilets with some dodgy-looking blokes all huddled together. There was money changing hands. They caught him staring and pinned him against the wall and then Ian recognized him and called them off, spoke to him nice as anything and told him to forget all about it.’

‘You should’ve said something.’

‘What good would that’ve done?’

‘We could’ve warned Karen.’

‘She wouldn’t have listened.’

May starts to get up to clear the dishes, I reach out and hold her arm. She looks at me. She waits.

‘What will we tell him, when he’s older?’ I say.

‘That’s up to Karen.’

‘Yes – but you know what it’s like, how hard it is without a dad, and what it’s like to have questions.’

She goes stiff. We don’t talk about this. It’s off limits. Her mother burnt most of his things one day in one of her mad dos.