Whole swathes of Attercliffe were being demolished around the people who lived there, and when Daniel walked alongside Alison through the streets after the party, they could’ve been in a war zone, passing rows of bombed-out houses, bricks and mortar turned to rubble, homes reduced to dust. This part of the city was a far cry from Daniel’s home in Nether Edge, and when in the past he’d thought about Attercliffe at all, he’d thought: What a shithole, doomed and degraded, the death row of Sheffield. But now it turned out that Attercliffe contained Alison Connor, and she seemed like such a wonderful treasure that all he was fully aware of was the way she couldn’t quite match her stride to his, and the slenderness of her shoulders beneath his arm, and the fresh, clean smell of her hair. She hadn’t wanted him to get on the bus with her after the party, she’d tried to insist they say goodbye at the bus stop, but he didn’t want to send her away into the darkness on her own, and she’d had to concede it was nice being together, more than nice, it was lovely, so yes, it made sense to be together for just a while longer, before Christmas kept them housebound. She’d found her voice now; he could barely get a word in edgeways. She knew her music, knew what she liked: post-punk, mostly, Costello, Blondie, the Buzzcocks, and a new band, with a new sound, the Human League, Sheffield lads. Daniel knew them, he and Kev and Rob had seen them play plenty of times, they were sort of on speaking terms with Martyn Ware, and he managed to get that in, but now she was talking about Christmas and how much she hated it – the bogus bonhomie and crass commercialism – and he considered how he’d never said ‘bonhomie’ in his life, or heard anyone else say it either. He wondered if she was too clever for him, and then he wondered if a snog would be out of the question. He really, badly, wanted to stop walking and press her against a wall, and kiss her until the sun came up. Instead he said, ‘Well, Christmas is the reason Kev Carter had a party, so there’s that to be grateful for.’

She laughed, and it was like music to him, and he thought, Christ Almighty, what’s happening to me?

‘Stu Watson’s such a creep,’ she said. ‘But he was the only person other than you that I knew there.’

‘You should pity him,’ Daniel said. ‘He fancies you. Everybody does.’

She stopped walking, abruptly. ‘What?’

‘It’s true. You’ve got a right army of admirers out there.’

‘Oh yeah, since when?’

He shrugged. He couldn’t quite read her tone; she might be genuinely puzzled, she might be furious, she might be flattered.