We made a hamper together one Christmas. Nan knew the wife of a man who’d lost his job. They had nothing. So we went to town and chose fruit and nuts and biscuits and a box of Milk Tray and some children’s gloves from the market, some colouring pencils and big fat cheapo colouring books. And we wrapped the toys and arranged it all in a big cardboard box covered with Christmas paper. I bit off small strips of Sellotape and handed them over. It was heavy. They lived round the corner and I walked next to her while she carried it, stopping to steady herself against the houses. I could’ve sworn that all the curtains on the street were twitching. When we were near she handed it to me and I thought I might drop it for laughing. We peered round the side wall and saw a light on in the back of the house. ‘Go – now,’ she said and I shuffled as fast as I could and put it on the doorstep and the glass bottle of cordial clanked against the metal tin of Fox’s Family Assortment and I rang the doorbell and ran and she held my hand and we legged it back to her house.

A couple of weeks later, after church, a man I’d never seen before pushed his way through the crowd and spoke to Nan. He’d been trying to find out who did it, he said, and he knew it was her and while he was very grateful indeed for the thought there was no way he could accept it. And he pushed a ten-pound note into her hand and walked off. She just stood there for a while, we both did, and her cheeks were red, and then we went back for Sunday dinner, waiting for Mum to pick me up on her way home from work.

It fizzled out after that. She stopped taking me and I never said anything. I missed it but I didn’t miss it. We played board games while the roast was cooking, watched Songs of Praise after and sang along. I peed myself laughing at the congregations – their eager faces, so filled with spiritual fire that they couldn’t contain it.

The bus’ll be coming soon and there’s not another for half an hour. It’s now or never. I need to stop messing about and just do it. Put my headphones back in and walk, walk, walk to the beat of the song and feel like I can do anything. And I look up to the top of the buildings, some concrete and ugly and others towering over the shops with art deco cornices and long Georgian windows. Gargoyles on the old Bradford & Bingley. A whole hidden world above the sale signs and new season beachwear and stylised headless mannequins.