‘Remember Pluto,’ said Pearly. ‘Poor old Pluto.’ Helen didn’t reply. When Kevin was eight, all he wanted was a dog, and they bought a Labrador pup. Thirteen months later it was run over by a van delivering a new mattress, and they buried Pluto close to the lemon tree at the front of the Powys Street house. Kevin and Leanne were pretty cut up about it and didn’t want another pet. Kevin painted a lot of quartz stones all colours, put them in a marmalade jar, and buried them alongside Pluto with no explanation. Pearly had offered to get another dog, but Kevin had said it would only die. Pearly had read that the loss of a pet was often childhood’s useful introduction to the concept of death, but the value of the experience hadn’t been apparent to Kevin.

Some future owner of the Powys Street home would unearth Kevin’s jar of runes and Pluto’s bones while searching for a drain pipe or setting in a birdbath and wonder what personal history they represented: whose bereavement was assuaged.

Pearly did get in touch with Esther, and she promised to do her best about the minister’s visit, but it wasn’t enough, and a letter came from Colin Goosen wishing Pearly well for the port plan but saying that his schedule now didn’t allow for the trip. It was a disappointment, and Philip Utterspan made a good deal of it at the council table and in public. What did it indicate about the likelihood of significant government funding, he said, when the minister couldn’t even find time to come down to view the site and be given a briefing? In Paul Wrinskley’s newspaper report, Utterspan said he wasn’t against the port development project in principle but that there had been insufficient public consultation and unreliable costings and that the mayor had lost a sense of perspective concerning it. Insufficient public consultation is a catchcry so useful in politics, and it allowed Utterspan to criticise Pearly without permanently alienating supporters of the development. One man’s hobby horse, said the deputy mayor, and claimed Pearly had allowed his commitment to the project to become a matter of personal pride and so lost sight of the goal of economic benefit for the entire region.