There were a few shouts and a splash. From further along the path, a long wooden platform was visible and behind that a queue of men waiting to dive from the concrete walkway, chatting to each other. Two of them were wearing T-shirts. A man was at the edge of the board, standing very straight, before his knees bent and he made a quick, neat arc into the water. Another two jumped in after him, whooping, and swam together with their heads close. You couldn’t quite hear what they were saying. There was a pull, like the birdsong from earlier, something enchanting about the wink of light on the surface of the pond.

The last place that Dad was seen. People might have known him in there. He knew everyone.

The path dipped down and round the corner, where a few men were on a narrow stretch of grass in front of the entrance gate. Sitting, standing, lying down, most just in trunks, though there wasn’t much sun. The pool was hidden from here. There was a corrugated iron roof and two Raleigh Burners locked to the fence. Matty stood at the gate, looking at the sign: NO LADIES ALLOWED TO SWIM. There didn’t seem to be anywhere to pay for entry.

‘Going in, are you?’

A deeply tanned man with a white beard that touched his bare belly stood with feet planted apart. He was wearing trunks and fraying leather sandals. Slowly, his eyebrows lifted, eyes twinkling. His belly stuck out like a half-full rubbish bag. He waited a little longer, before walking past the gate with a strange, slow bounce and disappearing round the corner. You could just hear the splashes from here.

No, not going in this time, Matty thought. But the man had asked. So – imagining Arnold Schwarzenegger’s wraparound sunglasses and the set jaw – I’ll be back.

Further up the path, someone was sleeping on a bench, a coat over their head.

Dad might have been attacked. People did that, stabbed other people on the street and took their wallets. Someone had stabbed Dad and taken all his money and that would have been when he’d lost his memory and didn’t know that he lived in Golders Green and was from Ireland and sort of supported Barnet, even if they were a bunch of legless eedjits. Matty crept closer to the bench. The smell of pee or beer or both got stronger.

A football sailed over and landed on the person, bouncing off a harder part. There was a sudden sound from underneath the coat like a furious monster woken from hibernation. A flash of grizzled, snot-streaked cheek. White stubble, and an eye black and bright and fixed on Matty.

Run.