There is a list somewhere of secondary-school English teachers with my name waiting to be added. If my father’s hadn’t been there already, if I hadn’t seen two graves filled, that’s exactly where I would be, and my life might have been all the better for it. That would be the way the moral fable of my life (TV version) closes, with me accepting the pleasure of sacrifice and embracing my duty as a tutor of the young, a facilitator of their escape attempts, a decision taken under the calming influence of a sensible woman, pretty in a red jacket in autumn, the season that would dominate my life from then on, the back-to-school, the evanescent glory of summer, the sharp, cold air of the mornings. She was always there for her friends and knew how to talk to small children and stop them crying. We would marry and move into a house we would certainly not be able to afford in London; the story would take place in Oldham or some other benighted town of the north, somewhere with some regional colour, redbrick terraces and new-built mosques and the skeletons of manufacturing. That was one thing about teaching – you could do it in the north. And nursing. I am from a family of teachers and nurses and I am ashamed and proud that I am not like them. But the woman will make me good. I will teach a class of hopeless children from families with no purpose in a landscape devoid of industry, and the children will hate me while I try to love them and to love myself in a town of pound shops and bookmakers, the Wetherspoons the only pub with custom, serving fish and chips and a pint for a fiver on a Friday, as busy in the afternoon as it ever is in the evening, and I will try for as long as I can and then I will cheat on the good woman, I will cheat on her every chance I get, regardless of my children, who will be of the town and not of it, who will move away and leave me there and feel superior to me.

*

I heard the shower stop and called through to Mary to ask her if she wanted a cup of tea. I made two mugs. She came into the kitchen wearing a towel, her hair dripping down her shoulders. I handed her her tea. She saw me look at her and held my gaze briefly. Her eyes the colour of a swimming pool. She could save me, I thought. I wanted to step forwards and hold her.

‘We’ve got to move out,’ I said.

‘I heard you talking to him. I was worried it might be something like that. How long?’