‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘She did, occasionally. Official stuff so I could sign on, and the odd dirty postcard from Kev Carter.’

‘But nothing from me?’

They stared at each other.

‘I think she maybe didn’t trust me,’ Ali said.

‘Oh my God.’

‘I think she thought I was trouble.’ She remembered that July afternoon, Marion Lawrence shouting down the street after her, Is there something our Daniel needs to know?

‘She didn’t send me your letters.’ Dan’s mind raced, recalibrating the details of the past. The difference it would have made! The difference, to him, to Alison, to their place in the world. She’d been his technicolour dream, his yellow submarine, his be-all and end-all, and then, for a few years at least, all the colours had drained away and he’d been plunged into black and white. ‘I do remember her telling me I’d best forget you,’ he said. ‘After you went, and I couldn’t find you, she said you seemed very troubled and the best thing would be to forget I’d known you. I told her to fuck off, and she went off on one, cried and raged, really unlike her, but I’d never sworn at her before, had to say sorry about a thousand times. My dad hid in his pigeon loft for two days.’

Ali’s face softened. ‘Bill,’ she said. ‘I so loved Bill.’

‘He loved you too, he probably still does, although he barely speaks these days.’

‘Oh, Daniel, I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have hurt you for the world, but I had to get away, not from you, obviously not from you, but from everything else.’

‘You seemed to be happy enough the night before, at the High Green miners’ welfare.’

She was silent. Not a soul on earth knew what she’d endured on that dreadful Saturday, when Martin Baxter had turned up and altered the landscape entirely, so that the night before had seemed to belong to another time, another country, and she’d felt so stained, so ashamed – it had seemed, to her, for a long time afterwards, that all she was, was shame.

‘Sorry,’ Dan said. ‘I don’t mean to reproach you.’

‘No, it’s OK. There’s a story to tell, but I don’t have the words.’

And you a writer, he thought; he wondered how black her story could be, but he only smiled at her and said, ‘Another time then.’

‘Did your mum tell you I came to see you?’ Ali said suddenly. ‘The Saturday you were in Manchester?’

‘Nope, my dad did, said you’d turned up all upset then run off. He was agitated, really agitated.’

Ali said, ‘I know, I’m sorry, I just really needed to see you.’

‘But you knew I wouldn’t be there, didn’t you?’