As the path climbed higher, the trees fell away. The top of the Heath was where some families from church had picnics on Sunday afternoons, though the three of them hadn’t gone for ages. Mamma always said she was busy these days. There was the tall spire on the left and hard glints of the City further over. Kids were everywhere. The sort that would be on the new bus to St George’s, kids who weren’t really kids any longer. Taller, wider, louder. They sat in circles like Boy Scouts, crisp packets in place of a fire. Smaller children were with their parents. Bikes, pushchairs. And more dogs than people.

The map didn’t make much sense anymore. Matty walked straight through the shin-deep grass, eyes down, hoping to hear two syllables called, sounds that would make everything OK again. Mat-ty.

He might be here. He’d decided to camp for a bit, live off the land. His Gypsy blood. He often talked about going back to Ireland, where everything was so green. ‘Green,’ he’d say, gently shaking Matty by the shoulders. ‘Not grey.’ But he liked it really, London. He liked the mix of people, and the noise. Flip him like a coin, and he’d say that Ireland was ‘quiet as the bloody grave. I’m never going back there. My God.’

Or he might be wandering the Heath. He’d lost his memory and somehow ended up here. Not known his name. ‘Joe,’ he’d normally say with his hand out to just about everyone he met, people in the international kosher supermarket below their flat, people on the street, cigarette propped in the side of his mouth or between his fingers. They always shook his hand, told him their name.

A quick look at the squashed blue shape on the map. It was just down there. Matty descended the hill and stood by the fence, heart tap-tapping loudly.

Clusters of cow-parsley, like mini-nuclear explosions, sloped down to a wide stretch of water. The Men’s Pond. It was the same colour as the clouded sky and had a smaller version of itself drawn by rope-markers, with a square platform in the middle. Inside the ropes, you could see the pink arms of men doing laps. A yellow swimming hat. A red one.