‘Right, well, you gotta get it this time.’

Just right, but then I pumped the accelerator and shot back, clunked the other car’s bumper bar.

‘Jesus, Clem.’ Pop got out, went around and had a look.

I followed. ‘It didn’t seem that close.’

We studied the dent.

‘You barely touched it.’ He scanned the deserted street. He could knock on a few doors, explain, or … ‘Get in.’

‘Shouldn’t we—’

‘Just get in.’

The thing was, we didn’t know any neighbours this far down Lanark Avenue, and it was just a little dent and, if you didn’t tell anyone, they wouldn’t notice.

Driving the rest of the way, Pop said, ‘That doesn’t make it right.’

‘Should we go back?’

‘That wouldn’t make it right either. It was just a bomb. I mean, if it was something posh …’

I smiled. ‘Then you would’ve stopped?’

‘Maybe.’

We passed the Donnellans (33). David was there, in his wheelchair, under his tree, watching. We waved; he lifted his hand, almost. His mum, Val, or brother, Peter, put him out most mornings, and afternoons, and he’d sit for hours at a time, watching the traffic, waving to Ernie on his way to the Windsor. Like a pot plant, and no, I don’t mean it that way. They’d just put him out. Better than sitting inside all day, watching television, staring at the four walls.

We got out, and Pop looked over the fence and called, ‘How are you, David?’

He mumbled something.

Pop must’ve felt social. He wandered into the Donnellans’ yard of dead lawn and cracked Bay of Biscay, a few old fruit trees, mostly dead. ‘Bit hot to be outside, isn’t it? Want me to take you in?’

‘No.’ David shook his head.

‘Righto. Got something to drink?’

‘Mum’ll bring me something soon.’

David Donnellan: rugby player, law graduate, then recluse (as the street whispers began). Ambulances coming and going. All of this, dimly remembered from my own early years, overheard (Aunty Maureen, again), assumed.

‘Okay,’ Pop said. ‘See you, David.’

Muscular dystrophy. But what did the name matter? Plenty of people around Gleneagles were running rough. Plenty of cancer. The Famous Disappearing Marinelli (a heart attack, the same way Sid Donnellan had gone in 1958), a girl with Down syndrome around the corner, a couple of spastics. We didn’t mean it cruelly; it was just what they were called. You looked out for them, went and told their mum when you saw them heading towards North East Road.

Coming in, Pop tripped on one of the cracks. ‘Fuck.’ Ever since David’s wheelchair days no one had watered anything at number 33. No sign of Val at the end of a stinker, standing in her dressie, watering the fig tree that grew in the same way rabbits bred. No Peter Donnellan, in the early hours (before the sun had spread across the horizon) in his slippers, sprinkling the burnt clivias.