‘It’s all right – ’ I began, but his face crumpled.

‘That was your fault!’ he announced, stamping his foot in the muddy ground.

The lads next door continued to sing.

‘I’m sorry, Robert,’ I said. ‘I’m really sorry.’

Just then, Kathryn came through the gate.

‘We were doing so well,’ I said, watching my wife’s frown deepen as she approached.

She put an arm around Robert and bent to look in his face. ‘What’s happened?’

‘Nothing to worry about. A little accident.’ I reached into the mud and dragged out one of the sodden seedlings.

‘He’s covered in mud, Howard.’

‘I think we can salvage these.’ Just a bit of drying off, that was all that was needed. ‘I really think they’ll be all right, son.’

Kathryn straightened up. ‘What’s that row?’

‘It’s the men next door,’ Robert said. ‘Dad told them to turn it down.’

Kathryn glanced at me. ‘Did you?’

‘Dad told them,’ said Robert. ‘And they turned it down.’

‘Really?’

‘There’s no need to sound so damn surprised,’ I said, picking up the muddy watering can.

Kathryn blinked back something like astonishment. ‘No. No, of course not,’ she said, letting go of Robert and touching my sleeve. ‘Sorry.’

‘Shall we plant these again, Robert?’ I held out the seedlings.

He took one of them in his hand and gazed down at the soggy root.

‘We can still plant them, can’t we?’

He took another seedling from me and spent a moment examining it.

‘No harm done. Let’s give it another go.’

Then he lifted his head. ‘All right,’ he said.

Kathryn watched us as I led him back to our patch to start again. When I looked back at her, she was smiling. ‘You’ll make a gardener of him yet,’ she called.

eight

January, 1982

I’d been pleased when I’d come home to another bike propped up beneath the kitchen window. ‘Robert’s brought a friend home,’ said Kathryn. ‘From school.’

I could hear the boys’ laughter leaking down the stairs. Kathryn lifted a chop onto a plate. ‘They’re having theirs upstairs. I said they could.’ She spooned out four slightly soggy potatoes, letting a small pool of water settle around them, then sat down to her cheese sandwich.

‘That’s all right with you.’ She chewed her Red Leicester.

I wasn’t sure if it was a question. ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. I sawed into the meat and watched the fat swirl into the potatoes, then thought to add, ‘Just this once.’

Every night after that, a boy called Paul came. Paul’s neck was already speckled with pimples. His fair hair was short on top but too long at the back, and often stuck out like a stiff brush where it met his collar. They played the same records over and over. Tainted love, woah yeah. The words to that one got stuck in my head.

Paul always seemed to be in my house. His bike (a racer, twelve gears) propped up beneath my kitchen window sill. His jacket (light grey, elasticated waist) slung over my banister. His shoes (white plimsolls, a star on each side) on the mat in my hallway. I thought I could smell his socks, see the sweaty imprint they were leaving on my stair carpet as he followed Robert up the stairs.