Pearly tried to switch his mind to the wording for the letter to Colin Goosen, but his thoughts remained with his family, especially Leanne. The birthdays and Christmases, her weekends back when she was at university, the usual days of no special note except that they were all happy together. ‘Don’t go to sleep on your back, or you’ll snore again,’ said Helen. Pearly turned on his side, away from the light, closed his mouth, deliberately breathing through his nose. He couldn’t recall much of Cardiff from his one visit. It hadn’t struck him as a beautiful city. He wondered if Leanne ever talked much about her parents to her family there. He was sad that he had no part in his grandsons’ lives. He meant nothing to them. They would feel no loss when he died. He was an abstract, a face ballooning occasionally through the ether, the absent source of money sent for their holidays or the less successful provider of toys they’d already outgrown.

Everybody has cause for shame. Not necessarily arising from spectacular, or even just illegal, malpractice, but difficult to carry nevertheless and impossible to completely suppress. Instances of behaviour unreconciled with your opinion of yourself. Pearly didn’t consciously go there, but was visited by such regret from time to time.

The house after the Powys Street one, for example: the second home they owned and larger, better looking. Overall it had been a happy place, but Pearly didn’t return to it as easily and affectionately as to Powys Street, for when he did so he was reminded of the neighbours they’d had there and a garage workshop. The Willards, Neville and Betty, withdrawing into old age with barren acquiescence.

Betty was thin, shuttered and prim, always pegged her knickers on the inside wire of the rotary clothes line. She was prompt to clip any plant of Helen’s that ventured a runner over the fence and sour if Kevin or Leanne needed to retrieve balls or Frisbees. But it wasn’t Betty whom Pearly felt bad about. It was his failure to offer any friendship to Neville, who was old, sick and lonely while Pearly was young, healthy and sought out by others. Neville had been a heavy smoker for most of his life and given up too late to save him from the consequences. Emphysema, and even when invisible behind the dividing tin fence his deep cough located him. He had no children, no mates came around. Betty encouraged him to spend time outside or in the back of the garage with his gardening stuff and old-fashioned workshop tools piled into discarded kitchen drawers.