I wish I’d made a different decision; things might have worked out better then, but I didn’t. I should have, but I didn’t. I have three excuses. One, he was my brother. Two, I didn’t really know what I’d seen, so what would I tell someone – someone being my parents? Three, what the fuck was I supposed to do?

‘I promise,’ I said.

‘You probably shouldn’t come round here again.’

I nodded and handed him his tea.

‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘See you round.’

‘Yeah. See you.’ I walked towards the door.

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Have you got the watch?’

The watch. Of course. I put it on the table.

‘Nice one,’ he said.

They were the last words he said to me for more than five years.

Families are places of half-hidden secrets. People would prefer to keep them fully hidden, but when you live in such close proximity they spill out, in overheard conversations or muttered asides. That meant that I never really knew what was going on with Roland and Chrissy, but I heard enough to piece it together. He had introduced her to heroin (Mo’s version: got her hooked on that shit), she had left school (Mo, again: thrown away her education because of that bastard) and was living in his flat and working a series of low-paid jobs (Mo: working her fingers raw to support that useless piece of trash). I also knew that Dad had fallen out with his only sister about it all. She blamed him. I suppose we all need someone to blame.

I had a secret of my own, though, or at least I thought I did. They knew about the heroin and the jobs and the shared flat. What they didn’t know about was the shared bed. How could I be sure they didn’t, in this world of half-truths? Because I was there when they found out.

One day – about a year since I’d last seen Roland – I went round to see Dad. He was in the garden, and there was a woman there with him.

It was my Aunt Mo.

‘Arthur!’ Mo was a woman who could work up to quite a pitch from an apparently calm start. The fact she was already shouting was not a good sign. ‘We need to talk.’

‘Do you want some tea?’ Dad said.

‘No, I bloody don’t.’

‘Is everything OK, Mo?’

There was a long pause. When she spoke she was screaming. ‘That bloody son of yours! He’s —’ Her words were choked off by a sob.

‘He’s what?’

‘She’s pregnant, Arthur.’ She must have sat down; the garden chair scraped on the patio. ‘Your son – Roland—’

‘It’s not him, is it?’

‘Aye.’

‘How do you know?’

‘She told me. She says they’re in love.’

‘Good God. She’s his cousin!’

‘What are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mo said. ‘I have no bloody idea.’