Elspeth had seen to it that Malcolm had a space in the family plot. The service was brief, attended by a dutiful smattering of cousins, no mention of divorce or second marriage. Could have been about anyone. Donald greeted a couple of old school friends at the gate, shook hands, went off on the last ferry, feeling nothing.

HAMZA

London, 24 January 2018

Yeah, his feet knew where they were going. Homerton may look different now, but his body had a map. The Shish had been the first to go, after his uncle’s heart attack, turned first into a tapas place and now a ‘coffee specialist and artisanal gluten-free bakery’ called Loving, its exterior painted the same classy matt grey as the rest of the shops on the street. A white guy his own age perched on a high stool in the window, a green light from his tablet reflected in his stupid round glasses. Neither of his cousins had wanted the place; he’d heard they’d done pretty well out of the sale though. The grotty pub he used to meet Clio in after work had had its high walls knocked out and was now a glassy brasserie-café-thing, full of yummy mummies and their buggies. He paused at the end of the street, at the turning to Clio’s bedsit, snapped himself a selfie in the middle of the road. Not sure why he’d done that. Just to prove he’d been there, maybe.

There was nowhere to sit outside Clio’s. He wondered about leaning against a wall or a lamp post for a while, just to stop, but a sharp up-down from behind the sunglasses of a passing thin blonde gripping an armoured truck of a buggy made him realise his appearance wasn’t usual on these streets, these days. This ain’t fucking Hampstead, love, not yet, don’t get ideas, he wanted to hiss beneath his teeth.

A funny sort of pilgrimage, this. Her door had been painted white, a brassy new entry system installed to the front, rather than the cracked, scratched plastic that had been half pulled off its hinges by some feral 4 a.m. raver. He wondered whether they’d made any changes to the insides. Probably not. Slap of paint. The bare minimum required to justify doubling the rent, shoving out Clio and her stairwell-full of junkies and migrant families, selling each one on at three times the price or something to a nice young couple looking to get onto the property ladder.