‘Maybe he’s genuine,’ Tom said. ‘Maybe he’s quit heroin for good.’

‘Maybe.’ She shrugged. ‘You’re probably right. At least you can give him a chance. Treat him as though he’s turned over a new leaf. If your parents did, then you can.’

‘That’s it,’ Tom said. ‘I’m surprised they forgave him. Dad hasn’t said his name for years. And now he’s letting him live in their house.’

‘Maybe his illness has changed your dad’s priorities,’ Alice said. ‘And everything’s forgivable, in the end.’

‘Not everything.’

‘Tom,’ Alice said. ‘What did Roland do? You’ve never told me.’

‘You never asked.’

‘Perhaps now’s the time,’ she said.

Tom looked at her. ‘It’s a long story.’

She gestured at Joanna. ‘Well, as long as she stays asleep, I’ve got nothing better to do.’

Summer, 2012

Tom

In the summer of 2012 I was twenty-one; my baby brother was eighteen. I was working a summer job after university, looking for something permanent, the older more responsible brother. Roland was about to start music college, doing his thing. Tall, slim, handsome, with long hair and long legs that perfectly suited the jeans he wore, which were tight around the thighs and flared below the knee in a throwback to the 1990s which were themselves a throwback to the 1970s.

He was also charming and funny, and a talented musician. He’d won a place at the Royal Northern College of Music, but wouldn’t last the first year of the course. That was Roland’s problem; he was feckless. For all his talent, he never seemed to achieve anything, because he never stuck at it for long enough. It was almost as though he was too scared to really apply himself in case he failed.

Is that true? Or is it just my attempt at a post-facto pop-psychological justification for what he did? Either way, what’s undeniable is that he had talent, and he wasted it. A large part of the tragedy of Roland lies not in what he became but in what he could have become, but then perhaps that’s true for all of us.

He lived with three friends in a tiny flat in Manchester city centre, not far from the pub he worked in. Worked is perhaps putting it a little strongly; between the four of them I think they shared a full-time job, but they did enough to get by. Roland spent the rest of his time hanging around with a group of friends who, supposedly, were members of his band. They called themselves The German Genius, which now makes little sense to me as a name but back then, in a country where 52 per cent of the people were a few years off voting for Brexit, was quite provocative.