‘Worst thing of all,’ Mum said, ‘was what happened next. A week after she got out of hospital she thought, No, I’m not gonna do it. She stood up to her mum and walked out on her, returned to the hospital and asked for him back.’ She was imagining this, I guessed. The stark ward, the nuns, with the smugness Pop told us he wanted to wipe from each of their faces.

‘What?’ I asked, watching the jumpers move in the breeze.

‘They said, They’ve already taken him. So she had to go home to her mum, and welcome Les into the house, and get married, and all that. But she just keeps knitting, and luckily, Les doesn’t say nothin’.’

‘Keep off!’ Val’s voice, from next door. She stood opposite Ernie beside the fallen fence with its rusted wire. He said, ‘Get yer facts straight.’

David twisted to see. ‘No closer, Ernie.’

‘Was a time,’ Val said, ‘people looked out for each other.’

‘What, spreading tetanus?’ Ernie asked.

‘They never hurt you.’

Pop spread his hands on his legs, studied his fingers.

‘Don’t you lecture me,’ Ernie said. ‘I helped with that roof.’ And he indicated. ‘Nailed every sheet on.’

‘You killed them. The lot of them.’

Pop stood and hobbled towards the borderlands. ‘Don’t you reckon people are sick of hearin’ it?’

Silence. Except David’s murmuring, as he tried to turn to see.

‘It’s done. Let’s get on with it. I could complain, we all could, but …’

Ernie said, ‘She thinks I called the council.’ Turning to Val. ‘I didn’t.’

‘You did.’

‘Ring ’em, ask ’em, just stop goin’ on about it.’

I waited, watched, as Pop decided.

‘Christ, Val, if he says he didn’t …’

‘Who then?’

‘Could’ve been a hundred people.’

‘Why would I have waited all these years?’ said Ernie. ‘If I don’t like something I deal with it, but I don’t scab on anyone. Anyone.’

Val stared at him, unsure. She turned to Pop. ‘Who then?’

He indicated Ron’s place. ‘Someone who’d had enough, I guess.’

Val went in, and Ernie waited, and said to Pop, ‘God knows I woulda been entitled to.’

I’ve never been able to resist supermarkets. As a child I perfected the art of the Friday sickie. Warming Mum up on a Thursday night, a few coughs (as Jen said, Faker!), slow walk, red eyes (plenty of rubbing). Then, on the morning: I can’t get out of bed … I think I’m gonna chuck (Jen: That’s the worst acting ever!). But it usually worked.

And why all the effort? Simple: shopping. Every aisle a world of possibilities: meals you’d never thought of, new lines of cream biscuits, prawns, and a thousand other things we couldn’t afford. And here I was, years later (no point faking a gut ache in Year Twelve), walking the same aisles, smelling the same fake citrus, feeling safe. But maybe it wasn’t the promise of virus-free chopping boards. Maybe it was the memory of Mum, who’d let me push the trolley, or sit in it, like Blackbeard in search of treasure.