‘You know when they are there but they don’t do or say anything? Like nobody has a clue what to do with them? Then they disappear and not a single person even bothers to mention it. That is happening to me, I think.’

I was familiar with numb feelings of this type. In the garage I felt like anyone could step in and play me, if they were supplied with the correct expression of anguish, the sluggish reactions of someone baffled by their own poor choices. Often, in the evenings, when self-pity set in, talking seemed like a good idea. I would say ‘Talk to me, Kevin,’ and he would oblige. Kevin’s cinematic knowledge was both detailed and absurd. It left slim room in his brain for anything else, but I was grateful for it. It eased the spectral silence of the garage. I liked to make a big show of listening to him. I think it made him feel better, like he had done more than mark a time-card, weed the yard, wait.

I wanted to impress him. It was just something in the air between us.

‘You know, I did some films, small parts, but I was on set.’

Both of us, perfectly unmoving in the motorway breeze.

‘What was it like?’ he asked.

‘Like everything else after a while. Almost boring. Unpleasant. A lot of hanging around.’

‘Is that why you left?’

‘Yeah. And all the good roles started drying up.’

‘Oh, that happens.’ Kevin agreed earnestly. ‘I have heard of that happening to women.’

Within a few weeks, I developed a nightly routine of walking briskly, guiltily, past the house where Kevin still lived with his father. I did not like the conclusions I came to. I could picture him inside, folded over his single bed, staring intently at a screen. Some mornings, I could imagine a faint trace of a television glow on his body.

*

It seemed embarrassing to go out looking for people I knew on my grubby, old streets, but I did it. I was past pride at this point anyway. I had put it behind me, no plans to see it again. My friends, what remained of them, were sweet girls – transparent, tame – but likeable. I assembled us together in a bar for one sorry night. Since we grew up with mothers who sat, dour, over their annual wine, we all drank like our fathers. It was our great generational decision.

Every now and then, they asked, in an offhand way, what I had done during my time away. They were furious that this was it, that they were still here, that they would never know their fully realised selves. They were ready to turn on me in a moment. In a wishy-washy attempt at sensitivity, I said that I had to leave to discover things about myself. I withheld the fact that there wasn’t much to discover. Just ordinary surface and, beneath that, more desperate surface. I begged them to consider my new walk. It was a city walk. I did a demonstration. ‘This is it,’ I shouted as I traversed the length of their favourite and most tragic town bar.