The fire that had ignited in Raymond’s belly wasn’t dying down. ‘You honour Pa in your own way, Artie. I’ll honour him in mine, you hear?’

Then he was on his feet, kicking his chair to one side, and stalking out to the garden, where the light of a silver moon beat down.

*

Some time later, when the chill was really settling in, Raymond heard the kitchen door open – and out his mother stepped.

For a time she just stood beside him. The chickens set up a racket at her approach. Somewhere, in one of the neighbouring gardens, a fox pricked up its ears.

‘I’m sorry, Ma,’ Raymond began. ‘I didn’t come back to cause trouble.’

‘It’s been the same with you boys since you was small.’

Mrs Cohen folded her arms across her breast. At first Raymond thought it was just so that she could keep in the warmth, but there was a hardness here too. Her expression was as set as granite.

‘It isn’t that I haven’t wanted to come back.’ He cautioned himself before continuing, because he was not sure that his mother would understand. ‘It isn’t that I haven’t thought about you all. But ever since Pa died, it’s like . . .’ He knew me, Raymond thought, but none of you do. He understood that a man can get on in the world, go places, if he’s got talent enough. That it doesn’t have to be the old ways of doing things. That Artie needn’t have gone down the same road as our father. Pa was a crook, but only because he needed to be. And . . . ‘Pa would have been proud of me, Ma.’

‘It’s easier to leave than to be left behind, Ray. That’s the way it’s been ever since there’s been people.’ She paused. ‘Artie isn’t a bad soul. But to see you, Ray, up there in a different world, different name, forgetting about us all . . . You know what that can do to a soul?’

Raymond snapped, ‘You act like it’s a betrayal. And all because I’m using what talent I have, using it to make something of myself. What would you rather? That I went the same way as Artie or that I danced?’

‘Oh, it isn’t the dancing,’ Mrs Cohen went on – and here her voice became venomous for the very first time. ‘Your father liked a dance. There’s plenty round here going down to the Social and the rest. Or taking a trip up west to go to one of those clubs down in Soho, where they’re dancing all those exotic dances. Bodies rubbing up against each other, hot and sweaty, where everyone can see!’