Before I could stop her, she threw herself at the door, breaking the lock.

He was sat on the pan, asleep, his soft brown pyjama bottoms round his ankles, a silver line of drool hanging from his chin to his chest.

I carried him back to bed.

‘Don’t wake him,’ I said, laying him on top of his crumpled sheets. But she held him so tight that he woke, and when he saw her frightened face, the tears came.

six

1976

I’d bought it for his sixth birthday, second-hand from Gregg’s in Darvington. I had been going in there since I was a boy, inhaling the smell of rubber, listening to the bright ringing sound of new bicycle bells. They had whole drawers of bells at Gregg’s.

I saw Robert’s first bike straight away. It was a red second-hand Raleigh Spider, with white mudguards, red rubber handlebar grips and reflectors included. It was too big for him, but I could lower the saddle and handlebars right down, and that way he’d have it for a few years, at least. It had a little pouch beneath the saddle for a spanner and a puncture-repair kit. The only thing it didn’t have was a bell.

I asked to see the selection.

‘Is it for a boy?’ the man behind the counter asked. His ginger moustache twitched. I had already selected a boy’s bike, so I thought the answer was obvious.

‘That’s a shame. I’ve only got Minnies left.’ He handed me a bell with a Minnie Mouse transfer on the top. That red bow was in her hair (how could mice have hair? I was sure that Mickey didn’t have any hair), and those eyelashes curled up towards her ears. I weighed the bell in my palm.

‘But it’s for my son.’

‘I might have some Mickeys in next month.’

Robert’s birthday was the next week, and I wanted him to have the bell, to be able to warn people he was coming, to make some noise, to announce his presence. I wanted him to be able to do that.

‘Perhaps I’ll just take a plain bell.’

The man behind the counter frowned. ‘All the kids have these ones. How old is your son?’

‘He’ll be six.’

‘He won’t mind, then, will he?’

I hesitated.

‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll throw it in for free, with the bike.’ So he had the bike with the Minnie Mouse bell. The thing that puzzled me was, he didn’t seem to notice the fact that it was Minnie, not Mickey. He just loved ringing the bell as hard as he could. ‘I tried to get Mickey,’ I explained, but he ignored me and rang the bell again. ‘We can get you another bell. Later on.’

‘Don’t go on about it, Howard,’ said Kathryn.

He rode the bike every day to school. He got on well with his lessons from the first, especially English and Art. When he came home with gold stars stuck in his spelling book, Kathryn ran out to the garden to show me. ‘Look, Howard,’ she said, thrusting the book between me and the dahlias, ‘Robert came first.’ We held the book out in front of us.