Matty looked at the cigarettes on the table. Mamma had forgotten them.

Back steps, just outside the door, looking onto the yard and the bins. No one could really see.

Matty sat down, the concrete pressing coldly on the backs of both thighs, holding the lighter from the bag of things stashed under the bed. Dad smoked roll-ups, plucking the strands of tobacco from the tin, putting the little filter in, working the paper around it, all while holding a conversation, or shopping, or having the phone tucked between his shoulder and his ear. Matty would sniff the Old Holborn tin when no one was looking. It smelt of old ships and wet trees.

Mamma always smoked Silk Cut. She had a blouse in the same deep purple as the wrapping inside. Three left. The box smelt sharp and dry.

It took four goes to get the flame to come, and another two before it made the cigarette burn. Matty pinched the orange end more firmly and sucked.

A hot, bitter taste, like popcorn on fire. The cough came instantly, lungs spitting the taste back out with a no thanks. For the first few goes, Matty held the cigarette like Mamma would have, quite far away and seesawing between two straight fingers. Took little breaths in and tried not to cough again – because grown-ups didn’t cough – and coughed each time anyway. As the cigarette got shorter, it was held like Dad’s, fingers curling so that the lit end was turned inwards. A small, angry face, peeling back as the smoke ate away at it.

You could imagine smoke winding its way down, rubbing the inside of each lung. It hurt. Dizziness too, the line of roofs and the train bridge wobbling. Matty gave up and watched the rest of the cigarette burn, millimetre by millimetre.

‘My brother says he’s a poof.’ Johanna nodded at the screen. Her family owned a Betamax video player, and she had recorded Live Aid so that she could watch it more than once. She and Matty were in her lounge, sitting on the thick carpet, with bowls of salt and vinegar and prawn cocktail crisps.

Freddie Mercury was in front of the piano. He wore a bracelet, a studded metal one, around the top of his arm. Lots of chest hair. You could see his nipples. He looked like a miner and not like a miner. Matty could imagine him in his white vest, hanging around with Daz at the Ponds. Now he was stalking around the stage, holding a microphone on a stand like a posh walking stick. A sea of people, more people than Matty had ever seen in one place, were singing along with him.

Johanna was looking over. ‘Don’t you care?’

‘No.’ There were poofs at the Pond. Holding hands. Daz was, wasn’t he? It didn’t seem to really matter.

‘You like him anyway?’