‘Maybe it’ll come good. D’you reckon it’s ready?’

‘I reckon if you reckon.’

John wiped his hands, opened a tin of primer, and started stirring it with a stick. He tried me again: ‘I know I’ve been in trouble, but at least I’m normal. Curtis just likes upsetting people.’

Depends on your definition, I thought. Counting steps. Upsetting.

‘He used to record Mum and Dad in their room, you know, and write it all down. I mean, why would anyone do that?’

‘It’s the sort of thing that interests him,’ I said.

‘Did the same with me, in the toilet, but I let him have it.’

He slipped on a mask, picked up the airbrush and fed the tube into the paint. ‘All ready.’ He switched on the compressor, stood back and laid paint in long, smooth lines. Then he stopped and took off his mask and said, ‘What d’you reckon, Doug?’

The spell was broken. Pop walked over, indicated a few spots, and John fixed them. ‘Long as we can blend it,’ he called, above the noise.

Pop sat down beside me and lit a smoke. He was back in the land of the living. Without any concession to the counting, he said, ‘You wanna go?’

‘Na.’ I knew this was John’s gig, and we had to make it work. Then he might come good, and Gary and Anne would be grateful. ‘Doesn’t interest me.’ But there was something in John’s eyes: an intensity, blue, focused, with sharp lines on his forehead where he concentrated.

John finished, put down the handset and sat next to Pop. ‘I reckon we might do it.’

‘I reckon.’

He took his smoke, had a puff and returned it. Then Pop said, ‘You got a good eye, and good hand, John.’

‘You reckon?’

‘That’s what I said at the start, remember?’

When the twelve-year-old would come over, help Pop with an engine, remove a radiator, change oil.

‘I told you there was a future. First time you come, you were knee high. You’d take a tyre on and off, remember?’

No reply. Which meant he did.

‘That’s why I was so disappointed, but …’

‘What?’

‘You might not be interested.’

‘What?’

‘Johnson’s, where I got this paint—crash repairs.’

Pop had already told me. It seemed a good idea. Society had to take care of its lost and lame. We saw that every day, when the opportunity class went gardening. In a way, it didn’t seem fair, but it’s just how it was.

‘Mr Johnson—Harry. I told him about you.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Said you got a steady hand, mechanical aptitude, been workin’ with me for a coupla years.’

The gal expanded as it got hotter; the heat came through onto our backs.

‘He said he might have a spot.’

‘No shit?’

‘But the thing is, before he’d take you on he’s gotta know you’re reliable.’