“Oh I see. Very good. I don’t know. What do you call them?”

“A pair of knickers.” She had gripped her hand over her mouth but she was shaking so much that a violent snort shot between her fingertips, and turned her crimson. “My father loved that one.”

In the end he had been forced to stop the car, they were laughing so much. He had repeated it that night to David and Maureen over spaghetti carbonara and they had both stared so blankly that the punchline, when he reached it, sounded not hilarious but vaguely smutty.

Harold and Queenie often talked about David. He wondered if she would remember that too? Having no children herself, and no nephews or nieces, she was very interested in his progress at Cambridge. How does David find the town? she’d say. Has he made lots of friends? Does he like punting? Harold assured her his son was having the time of his life, although in truth David rarely answered Maureen’s letters and calls. There was no mention of friends, or studying. There was certainly no mention of punting.

Harold didn’t tell Queenie about the empty vodka bottles he found stashed in his shed after the holidays. Nor did he mention the cannabis in a brown envelope. He told no one; not even his wife. He boxed them up and dumped them on his way to work.

“You and Maureen must be so proud, Harold,” Queenie would say.

He went over their shared time at the brewery, although neither of them had been part of the crowd. Would Queenie remember the Irish barmaid who claimed she was pregnant with Mr Napier’s baby, and stopped working very suddenly? People said he had fixed for the girl to lose the child, and that there had been complications. There was another time when one of the new young reps got so drunk he was found tied to the gates of the brewery, stripped to his underpants. Mr Napier had talked about setting the dogs on him in the yard. It would be a crack, he said. The boy was screaming by the end. A trickle of brown liquid streaked his legs.

Living it again, Harold felt a nauseous stirring of shame. David had been right about Napier. It was Queenie who had shown the courage.

He saw her smiling the way she used to; slowly, as if even the happy things had a sadness.

He heard her saying, “Something happened at the brewery. It was in the night.”

He saw her swaying. Or was it himself? He thought he might fall. He found her small hand gripping at his sleeve, and shaking it. She had not touched him since the stationery cupboard. Her face was white.

She said, “Are you listening? Because this is serious, Harold. It’s very serious. Napier won’t let it go.”

It was the last time he’d seen her. He knew she’d guessed the truth.