Jamal shrugs. ‘They’ve changed the rules for a couple of days.’

Bill doesn’t ask why.

‘Any of them good?’ Jamal asks.

‘Lazy lot. No one says they want to play football anymore. Everyone wants to be a star.’

‘You used to say the exact same thing about us, boss.’

That seems to lighten the mood slightly.

‘What are you doing with yourself over there?’

‘Bit of this and that. Training some of the local kids.’

‘Any of ’em good?’

‘Doesn’t really matter. Most are migrants. They just disappear after a while.’

Bill blows his whistle and walks towards the players and Jamal follows. It’s the smell of the grass. The neighbourhood. It’s watching Bill’s bandy legs as he walks. It’s remembering the nights Noor and Etienne would walk down to watch him practise, and how Layla would be trailing them because she was after Davie Kennedy with a vengeance back then. How they’d go to the chippy on the way home.

When training is over, Jamal runs that field with his Brackenham lads and a bunch of fourteen-year-olds. He can feel the Tannous brothers at his heels, just like the old days. They were never able to catch him then. Jamal has never been as invincible as he was at fourteen.

The younger lads approach to taunt Alfie, who’s lying on the ground panting.

‘The boss says you was even better than Rooney,’ one of them says to Jamal.

‘Yeah, better looking.’

And then it’s time to go, and without saying goodbye he turns to walk away. Because he knows he shouldn’t have come. Nostalgia is a weakness.

‘Jimmy lad?’

The old guy is close behind. Jamal stops and waits.

‘People around here talk more now,’ Bill says in a low voice. ‘It’s not that they’ve forgotten the dead, but some people . . . some people say the coppers shouldn’t have gone for the whole family. Some’d bet their life you had nothing to do with it.’

‘Would you?’

Bill’s eyes are watery with age and emotion. ‘My opinion’s not worth much.’

‘It’s worth everything.’

The old guy gives a smile. ‘Then I’d bet my life.’

Layla is in her bedroom when he gets back. The door is open so he takes a step inside. There isn’t much in the room apart from the bed, a print on the wall and a dresser, but it all speaks of class. The Bayat sisters always liked beautiful things and they can spot a bargain from across a marketplace. Jocelyn taught Layla to be frugal but to choose well, the approach she took when she chose Ali Shahbazi to marry. It was her only way out of the council estates. Layla’s way out was her brains.

She looks up from where she’s sitting on the bed. Her eyes are swollen, like she’s been bawling all afternoon. Beside her is a cardboard box of stuff that she’s sorting through.

‘Did you go down to Haversham Park?’

He nods. ‘No one speaks normally,’ he says. ‘It’s always a whisper. Noor’s name. Etienne’s. Now Violette’s. They’ve all become a whisper. Am I one?’