‘Should I get a business card made?’ I asked.

‘It’s something to consider,’ Management said and she repeated her manic thumbs-up.

*

Before the garage, my hometown was famous amongst people with car-sickness. It was here they stood retching and spewing before moving on somewhere better. When I came back from the city I thought we both might have changed in bright and glamorous ways, but we hadn’t. We were both long acquainted with disappointment and the joys of being used.

I’d been home two months and the house felt strangely empty to me, as if all our furniture had been sold. Somehow, a hundred tiny, unspeakable events had happened in my absence. I was reunited with my mother: two flirts; two women who might find themselves in abusive relationships and not even notice; two true suckers – back together.

Every dinnertime, she questioned why I ate the way I did, why I stuck my fingers in so many jars and rooted around. Did I eat vegetables at all? Did they serve peas in many restaurants in that city? I said I didn’t know, it wasn’t something I thought much about, and she pointed her fork at me, that absurd vegetable speared on it, as if we shared a private joke.

‘Were there boys there? Did you have a boyfriend?’

‘I did.’

‘Was he nice?’

‘Not really. He was irritating, you know. He said things like: I will have a small espresso. Stuff about coffee that people already just know. He wasn’t funny at all. And he kind of hit me, sometimes, in my sleep. Though I suppose I was just pretending to be asleep so it wasn’t totally honest of me either.’

‘It’s important for a man to have a sense of humour.’ A confiding, motherly smile. Her optimism was of the terrifying, impenetrable variety. It could burn through entire periods of history.

My parents had a fierce bond I admired. They had refined the habits of the long-married – saying nothing and then saying everything twice. They disregarded me, but in a practical way: the way you might ignore the weakling in a bomb shelter. Their days had their own sedate, private rhythm, punctuated by the sharp slam of the dishwasher. There was a strange, daily pattern: amble down the street; go to the supermarket; wave at a slight acquaintance; glance at the same patch of sky; come back home. They had seen boredom, stared it straight down, and survived. And still, they were less drained, less aged than I was. My father, who had always worn black, suddenly had the energy and enthusiasm for colours, and sported a pink shirt under a red golf jumper. My mother encouraged me to support his developing style. They had new friends, couples they had allegedly met in the supermarket. When these new people called on the telephone, I answered and said, ‘Who is this?’ and they said, ‘No. Who is this?’ like they might have stumbled across a burglary scene, a dramatic horror show that would strengthen their ties to my parents.