In any case, I couldn’t draw a line and swear to the truth, because so many lies were in circulation already. If the cockatoo came up again, I would have to stick to my story. It wasn’t easy to keep track of the lies, but I found myself well suited to the work. More troubling, in the long run, was the solvent effect all this invention and embroidery had on my memory. I had regarded the truth as solid and substantial, and the lies as very different, bright little additions to that edifice. Baubles on the Christmas tree – you know what’s glass and what’s conifer. But it wasn’t like that. Memory proved more liquid than solid. Everything ran together. I found myself thinking that the cockatoo was real, that it had existed and that it had come to our house. The story had become so detailed and vivid, and had been repeated so often, what was the difference? In my mind, it was now being treated as memory. Stranger still, real incidents in my past – events that I knew had happened, that I could confirm – took on the taint of fiction. If the past could be endlessly rewritten and adorned, then none of it mattered, none of it was really real.

Thus, the cockatoo. I had made it, it was mine, it would not leave me. And it was not truly ‘there’, out there. What was out there was a white plastic bag, snared in the branches of a tree.

That, at least, was easy to deal with. Having picked up the dropped can from the floor, I left it on the counter so its remaining contents could settle, and wiped up the spill. I then opened a third can and took a single, contemplative sip as I planned my approach. Then I put on my shoes and coat, unlocked the back door and went outside.

It was still raining – it had rained all night. The tree might be in the neighbour’s garden, but its branches spread out over my garden (Dave’s garden). It was a lime tree, and as the rain dripped through its branches, it picked up a sticky secretion. Everything in my garden (Dave’s garden) – a white plastic picnic table and a couple of chairs, a rusted barbecue, a couple of empty plastic planters – was covered in a thin layer of this vile, tacky substance, which never washed away or dried. Instead, it attracted grime from London’s air. The once-white walls were streaked with black, the glass of the kitchen extension was dimmed by dirt, the plastic chairs adhered to you and left smutty marks on your clothes.