‘It’s nice to see you on a site again. It suits you.’

‘Yeah, I thought I’d do my bit, you know – for the community,’ he said. ‘Besides, it’s something else to put down on my application letters. Shall we –’ He was pointing to an empty bench across the field. As they walked, he whistled to the other men and shouted, ‘Back in half an hour, Mr Broad!’ There was murmuring and laughter in reply, as though a bawdy joke had been returned in private. ‘Don’t mind them,’ he said. ‘The fresh air makes them giddy.’

‘What’s the project, anyway?’

‘It’s just a new pavilion for the football club. There’s never been a war memorial in town and someone had the bright idea to put this up instead. It’s something folk will get some use of, I suppose. The trouble is, it’s taken us a while. There’s only so much time these blokes can volunteer.’ He dusted off the bench for her before she sat. ‘How’d you know that I’d be down here?’

‘Well, I had to make a few stops on the way.’

‘You mean you saw my aunt. How is she?’

‘Not my biggest fan. She’d like to see you soon.’ She leaned back, watching the activity on site. A man was climbing to the roofline with a mallet. ‘You didn’t tell me you’d moved out and found a place.’

‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that.’ He dug his cigarettes and matches from his trousers. ‘I did mean to, every time I wrote, but I just couldn’t go back through it all again. She’s very hard to live with. Always was, but since what happened, she’s got even more opinionated. And more wrong.’ The match flame wouldn’t take at first – he had to strike it a few times. ‘It’s a funny way to love somebody, don’t you think? To have a set idea of how their life should go and force them to comply with it, or else. That’s Helen for you. At least she hasn’t given up on me entirely. Even if she thinks she owns me.’

‘You know you still have me and Mr Mayhood,’ she said, meaning it, but she could only guess how circumspect it must’ve sounded. ‘We still want to help you, any way we can.’

He stood up then and paced in front of her. ‘If you’ve come to twist my arm on that again, you’ve had a wasted journey.’

‘I’m not here for that, I promise.’

He went on striding back and forth, but never further than the bench’s width. ‘I don’t care if it takes me twenty years to save it, I’ll be paying my own way. You’ve lost too much already.’

‘I know that, Charlie. Will you please sit down?’

She thought they’d come to an agreement on the issue long ago, before he’d chosen to return to Borough Green. They’d said, as soon as he was ready to apply to architecture school, they’d write endorsement letters for him, cover his tuition fees, because it was the least that they could do, to make sure of his future. In truth, they’d barely had enough left of their savings to afford more than two years of a diploma, and Charlie had inferred this, given that they hadn’t paid his wages for three months by then. ‘You needn’t worry,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll do something different for a while and see what happens. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that there isn’t any point in making plans. Things go how they want to go. That’s it.’