‘It’s not like you think,’ Mum said. ‘I thought it best if we moved on. Nan and Pop agreed. It worked for a while until …’

‘Val didn’t mean anything.’

She stood, examined my shoes and said, ‘If you want to keep them, put them away. If not, pop them in the bin.’

And she was gone, leaving the photo on my bed. Out the front door, into number 33.

Pop had folded his shadow sheet, swept the floor and packed his tools in their box. Mum’d be happy, although she wouldn’t. Neat. Although with dementia, neat wasn’t always good. But he’d left a chair in the middle of the shed, and a small table with an ashtray, and smokes, and more magazines. The manuals had been packed away. I couldn’t see where. Maybe he’d thrown them. So now he just sat, remembering: the engines stripped and rebuilt; the radiators replaced; the thousands of litres of oil drained.

I could smell smoke, and checked over the fences. From the middle of the Donnellans’ yard, a grey haze filling the morning air, spreading low and settling in yards and the lane behind Frontline Ford. I heard Peter saying, ‘It’s goin’ everywhere, Mum,’ and Val replying, ‘Don’t worry, no one’s got their washing out.’

I lifted a sheet of iron to see what was going on: Val, carrying the dead weeds from the shed, depositing them on her fire, poking them with a fork and going back for more as Peter continued clearing around the Jag.

I was about to go in when Val said, ‘I didn’t mean anything by it.’

Peter was too busy working to respond.

‘I told you, they shoulda said something to them years ago.’

She dropped her fork, picked up a pile of old newspapers and hobbled across her yard. She threw the lot on the fire, which flared, catching her dress. She patted it, and didn’t seem to care that it had taken a chunk of polyester. The grey smoke whitened, rose, spread, and I ducked to avoid it. Then she returned and gathered more weeds.

‘It’s not like I told him much.’

‘He had to know some time,’ Peter said. ‘He’s old enough. What’s he, seventeen?’

‘I didn’t tell him the worst, about that time you spoke to them fellas out front of the house. Standing with their tattoos and cars and dirty-lookin’ faces.’

‘I remember.’

‘And you said it was a quiet street, and one of them told you to mind yer business or else he’d …’ She stopped, frightened by the thought. ‘There’s a lot more I coulda told him.’

‘But she wasn’t angry?’

‘She stood with that look and I knew, right away, and I said, It’s about Wilf, isn’t it? And she was about to let loose when she said, Well, if he knows he knows. Not here to blame you, Val.’

‘But she was?’