You’d bond with the work-camp staff. Six weeks of living in each other’s pockets meant laughing hysterically over in-jokes, declarations of platonic love and promises to see each other, but it never stuck. There was the old-man crowd at the Underhill Stadium, where Matty still went occasionally to watch Barnet hoof the ball around – though in a different spot to the old days. A couple of locals at Bar Italia in Soho, Matty having once been roped into a card game and winning first time. And plenty of familiar faces at the Ladies’ Pond, though none were ever past acquaintances, and the conversation rarely strayed past swimming.

Mostly, there was Heather, though it hadn’t started out well, following the first meeting.

‘Seriously, man, what the fuck is this?’ Heather had looked up and down with heavy disdain from behind the bar after a few visits. Matty had started jogging along the canal, coming in to down two pints of tap water before drinking a half of cider more slowly. ‘What’s this, like, gayboy pretend-lezzer thing?’

‘I dunno.’ A wary look. There’d once almost been a fight at a lesbian bar in King’s Cross, a trio of girls getting aggressive. ‘Just – is.’

‘Twisted as fuck.’ Disgusted delight in each word. ‘Fucking decide and be done with it. You’re giving us a bad name.’ But she couldn’t keep it up. ‘Can’t resist you in the end though, can we?’ she’d said, many months later, pouring blackcurrant cordial into Matty’s Guinness. ‘Big puppy-dog eyes saying “be my mum”.’

The box room in the flat above the pub had a skylight window spotted with bird shit, posters of poetry slam nights and Pam Grier films, most of Heather’s clothes on two packed rails and a mannequin sporting a large black strap-on. She let Matty pay rent when there was money, and didn’t press when there wasn’t. It was never permanent, and occasionally there’d be someone else staying there, but it was somewhere.

There was Heather, and whichever butch woman Heather was going out with, which for the last couple of years had been Val, a Scottish poet in her late forties with a love of tattoos and tall black women.

It had been Val who’d encouraged this trip. ‘You’ve got to go, lovie,’ she’d said, arm round Heather on their brown leather sofa, pointing a finger. ‘Scratch at those roots of yours. Even if you don’t find him, you’ll find something of yourself there. We go deep.’

‘Matty definitely does,’ said Heather. Stuck her tongue out.