The three of them watched me in silence as I pulled the tie from around my neck and let the fabric snake over my wrist before wrapping it into a tight ball. Then I turned and walked downstairs.

After tea, I asked her, ‘What do you talk to them about?’ ‘I don’t know,’ she said, not putting her book down. Then she added, ‘Sometimes we talk about how things were when I was their age.’

Kathryn at fifteen. I remembered it well. I remembered once walking past her house and seeing her sitting on her front lawn. Her father was trimming their hedge. She had a big blue flower pattern on her dress. I remembered her knees: how rounded and soft-looking they were, and how they fitted perfectly together – the full bone of one snug in the hollow of the other – as she sat with her legs tucked around the swirl of her skirt. I thought she was admiring her father’s skill, but the roar of a motorbike behind made me realise why she was sitting there. Who she was waiting for.

The next morning, after Kathryn had gone to the library, I left the house and got in the car to drive to the new supermarket. I had to scrape the windscreen and wipe the side window to see out. My hedges were bare, but I’d managed to keep the grass out front looking fairly healthy. The garden would survive a hard frost, I thought.

I was halfway down the road when I saw Luke cycle past, hat perched on the back of his head, white scarf hanging loose.

I pulled in and watched him in my rear-view mirror. He cycled up our path and didn’t bother dismounting his bike to ring the doorbell. Robert answered, grinned, ducked back inside, and then came out of the side passage, pushing his bike.

I balled my fingers inside my jumper, thinking it would be warmer there.

Luke’s bike wasn’t, I noticed, quite as good as Robert’s. We’d bought Robert’s just a year ago – at the time he’d wanted the same model as Paul, but I’d got him a better one, a Raleigh Dynamite. No Minnie Mouse bell this time, either. It had metallic paint that reflected all colours in the sun. The spokes ticked cleanly as he wheeled it down the path.

They pedalled slowly together, rising up and dipping back down to their saddles. I heard a hoot of laughter. Robert wore a new black woollen jacket which looked like the ones the men in the turbine hall had, except his didn’t have C.P.S. stamped on the back in chalky white letters.

I started the engine.

When they’d turned the corner of the road, I gave them a few minutes, then I followed, keeping well back.