Nan always used to sort this stuff out, buy me a card to sign, a present to wrap. Sometimes we went together. She’d peel five-pound notes from the wad she always had in her bank book and send me to the tills on my own. ‘Go on,’ she said, pushing me into the queue, ‘you’ve got to learn to do these things on your own.’ But it never gets easier. The small talk. The way the shop staff smile at you and pour change into your hand so the coins roll off and you have to bend over and balance the bag on your arm with everybody waiting behind.

There’s enough money left for lunch. Meat and potato pasties are two for a pound. It doesn’t make sense just to buy one. I grab a bottle of Coke and pay and find a bench near the war memorial even though it’s still too cold to be sitting outside. Smells like fags and fried onions and a little bit of spring. The pastry grease is seeping through the paper bag. Two kids in front of me chasing pigeons – running and stamping and sending small flocks into the air to sit and wait in the trees, on the railings. A group of women in long black dresses, faces covered – only a slit cut out for eyes. A choir singing gospel through a shitty sound system and handing out leaflets about the Good News.

The Coke bubbles sting the back of my nose. I eat too quickly. It burns on the way down. Swig the drink again, watch a girl walk past, dyed hair piled up high on her head. She’s wearing denim shorts with black tights underneath. From the back I can see everything, every crease and flex as she walks. She walks straight past the students with their little table and homemade posters, trying to collect signatures against the war in Iraq. She doesn’t even look at them.