‘Sorry?’ Dan said.

The man opposite offered a hand, which Dan took, and shook, still mystified, although there was something about this guy that rang a dim bell. Meanwhile the fellow himself was very much enjoying himself.

‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘Bloody hell.’

Dan said, ‘Look, I’m sorry …’ and the man laughed and said, ‘You don’t recognise me, do you?’

‘I don’t.’

‘Well, it’s been thirty-odd years. Dave Marsden. Rob’s brother. I once put a tent peg through your thumb?’

‘Christ Almighty!’

Dave nodded. ‘Insane,’ he said.

‘Dave Marsden!’

‘That’s me. I knew you straight away. Mind you, I see your mug in the music pages.’

‘Dave Marsden,’ Dan said again. ‘Oh my God. How are you?’

‘Yeah, all right, you?’

‘Yeah,’ Dan said. He raised his right thumb to show a short, jagged white scar running from the base of the nail all the way round to the fleshy pad at the back. ‘Apart from this disfigurement, obviously,’ and they both laughed. Reighton Gap, 1974, and Rob and Daniel had only been allowed to go camping there if Dave went with them. Dave, sixteen to their fourteen, and all he’d done by way of supervision was put up the tent, which was when he’d driven a metal peg through Dan’s thumb. It’d needed stitches really, but there was a woman in a caravan with a first-aid kit. She’d swabbed the wound and poured Dettol over it, then bound it in a series of pink Elastoplasts, one on top of another, until the blood stopped seeping through.

‘I blame you for my failure to make it as a lead guitarist,’ Dan said. ‘Couldn’t use my strumming thumb for months.’

‘Reighton Gap,’ Dave said. ‘What a fucking dump. I lost my virginity there though.’

Dan laughed. ‘Easily done, I should think.’

‘Wendy, her name was. I think it was anyway. Might have been Wanda. I was clueless, but she seemed to know what she was doing.’

‘No wonder we never saw you.’

‘She opened my eyes, that girl.’

‘Is Rob doing OK?’

Dave’s smile faded. ‘No. No, he’s not. He’s a drinker.’

Dan said, ‘Ah, right.’

‘We all drink, us Marsdens, but our Rob doesn’t stop. He started when he got made redundant.’

‘What did he do?’

‘Steel. Darnall Works.’

‘Oh, but Rob was …’ Dan hesitated, not wanting to offend.

‘Brainy? Yep, he was. Is. Cleverest lad in our family anyway. He went in on a management scheme, but brains didn’t save you from the chop in the steel industry.’ Dave sniffed, and gazed for a moment out of the window, then turned back to Dan. ‘You did all right though.’

‘That’s tough, about Rob,’ Dan said, and he thought about the passing of time and the lad he’d known, a steady kind of individual, thoughtful and quiet. At Reighton Gap, Rob had searched for fossils on the beach – ammonites, belemnites, crinoids – while Dan had stared at the girls in the sea and imagined them naked. He sat back in his seat and regarded Dave. ‘This is crazy,’ he said. ‘You, on this train. It’s like back to the bloody future.’