As soon as Matty reached them, Daz was gripping a shoulder. ‘Right, you. You’re young.’

‘Puny, you mean,’ said the other man. He had scraggy teeth and was seesawing a toothpick in his mouth.

‘Youthful. Finger on the pulse. Listen to this.’ Daz gestured towards the boombox. ‘Tell me what you think.’

Matty stood very still and listened. The music sounded like someone brushing a broom over concrete while robots clapped their hands, over and over. Squelchy, bubbling sounds, too. There was no singing or rapping or anything. ‘It’s OK.’

Daz leant down. ‘What’s that?’

‘Um. It’s OK?’ Not far away, there were two men sitting on towels, holding hands.

‘It’s rot,’ Daz said, gleefully outraged and as if he was on a stage. ‘It’s carnage. My ears are bleeding. If you’re going to play your music out here, young man, you’re going to have to take requests. And mine is The Brothers Johnson.’

‘No one else is complaining, you big bender,’ said the boombox man with a grin, his toothpick seeming to move of its own accord. He looked like a scarecrow on an afternoon off. Patched shirt and shorts. Tattoos all the way up his arms – girls with big eyes and boobs, ‘MOTHER’, a faded skull.

‘No else has the gumption to talk to such a layabout,’ Daz said. ‘They think you’ll lift their wallet and give them a Chelsea smile or a Glasgow snog or something.’ He turned to Matty. ‘You’re no help,’ he said, wagging a finger. ‘How’s your diving?’

‘Good, thanks.’

‘What sort of music are you into, geezer?’ The scarecrow-man gestured towards his own ears. ‘What you got on there?’

‘Um.’ Matty pulled out the Walkman, clicked open the Kurtis Blow tape, which really needed to be returned to Kyle from school. Handed it to him.

The man looked at it, flipped it over. Took his cocktail stick out of his mouth and nodded in a faintly impressed way. ‘All right. Nice. You know this is three years old, though?’

‘Yeah.’

He sat up, looked a bit more keen-eyed, like a kestrel. ‘You need to listen to some of the UK stuff coming in. On the pirate stations. I mean, they’re all doing American accents and that but they’re trying, you know?’

Matty nodded, not really knowing.

‘Oh God, here we go,’ said Daz, to several people around him who weren’t really listening. ‘Just call Doctor Gegs.’

The boombox man ignored Daz. ‘Heard of Newtrament?’

‘No.’

He rattled off a few more names. The music had changed to something with a bassline and arcade game gun-sounds. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’ He closed his eyes, face up to the sun, before opening his left eye again. ‘Go on, then.’ Fingers fluttered up and down. ‘Off you toddle.’

***