‘For cooling vaginas?’

‘Yeah.’

But she’d left it there, guessing it was another one of my phases: like collecting snails and painting them orange and watching them crawl up the toilet bowl, fall in, get out, crawl up … But This Excellent was nothing like The Vagina Cooling.

There was only one thing for it. I gathered the pages, flew out the door, down the drive and into the Donnellans’ yard. ‘Hey, David. Much happening?’

‘It’s quiet without the cats.’

‘Is yer mum gettin’ more?’

‘Says never again. She’s pretty crook about it, Clem.’

‘She’ll come good. Is Peter around?’

‘In the shed, I reckon.’

There he was, in their never-opened shed, standing beside his old E-Type Jag, pulling weeds that’d grown from the dirt floor. ‘Hiya, Peter,’ I said.

‘Clem.’

Pop had started fixing it once, before Val had told him they didn’t have money for parts. In the years since, Jen and I had played in it, pretending to be delivery drivers and Datsun-lovers. We’d shooed the cats (that had built beds out of clothes that had dropped from washing lines), cleaned out the rat droppings and the piles of old newspapers and books that the brothers had stored inside, and pretended.

But it’d gone to seed. Clogged with the dust and dirt that filled the Donnellans’ shed. In the spots where the floor had fallen through, the weeds had survived, pale and trembling, inside a car inside a shed.

Peter was at work. Clearing weeds and depositing them in a pile outside the shed, beside rubbish he’d cleared from the boot, under seats, all over. There were a few rat skeletons, and a cat mummy, ready for worship.

‘What you doin’?’ I asked.

‘Cleanin’ up.’

‘Why?’

But he just ignored me, taking a hoe and chipping at the weeds around the car.

‘You know what you said about me writing?’ I asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘D’you remember that other story I showed you?’

‘The penis one?’

‘Vagina.’

He noticed the pages in my hand. ‘You havin’ another go?’

‘Thought I might.’

‘What’s it called?’

‘This Excellent Machine.’

‘Good title.’ He put his hoe down, took my novel, sat on the Jag’s bonnet and started reading.

I sat beside him, told him what it was about, and how I wanted to be honest, and tell the world about Lanark Avenue. He looked from page to person and said, ‘What makes you think anyone would be interested?’

‘Just guessing. We gotta lot of funny people. Ernie, Ida, John … you and Davo and Val.’

‘We’re gonna be in it?’

‘Nothing mean. Just, you know, loosely.’

‘I see.’ He continued reading.

‘Should I come back?’

No reply.

‘Assuming you wanna read it.’

‘I will, if you want. But maybe it’d be best to write it first?’

‘What’s the point if it’s crap?’

After a few minutes he returned the pages. ‘Not bad. Bit clunky, but I can help you with that.’

‘So I should continue?’