Pop nearly turned back, nearly said, Water yer fuckin’ lawn, but you couldn’t say anything to the Donnellans. Life had shat on them.

Six years at university, and he’d never practised. I’d mentioned this to Mum during one of my why-should-I-go-back-to-school speeches, but she’d said (quite rightly, I suppose) David Donnellan was different. Really unlucky. Which was true. Peter, who’d graduated with him, had made good money in family disputes, divorce, that sort of stuff, before drifting into a premature, hand-knitted retirement.

As we headed down the drive, Pop said, ‘Used to hide in our shed. Look at him now.’

Six pm. A day that refused to cool. Me on my bed, strumming my thirty-dollar guitar. Nobody told me, struggling with chord changes, as Jen played Daryl and the boys at top volume. Summer love is like no other love. Of course, I was interested, so I tried the progression, D to A minor, or was it C—it was hard to tell. ‘Turn it down!’

No reply.

‘Oi!’

‘Fuck off!’

‘Mum?’

A voice from the lounge of Leyland wanderings. ‘Jennifer!’

‘What?’

‘Turn it down.’

‘Tell him to shove his guitar …’

I wasn’t fazed. Lennon’s white-hot words filled my bedroom. Along with the Nazis. See, genius. Sweaty hands and fingers, D strings and the bit between leg and balls. But what did it matter? I looked at the poster on my wall for inspiration: the great man, circa 1975.

‘Turn it down!’

I waited for the sun to drop, but that was still hours away. The heat rising from my shag-pile savannah. There was a ten-dollar fan, but that just spread the love. So you just sweated and waited for a change, which always seemed to be a day, a week, eternity away.

A woman’s voice: Mrs Champness. I sat on the end of my bed, trained my telescope and focused. Wendy, with her roller-hair and apron. I knew everything about her. Luckily, my window aligned with the Champnesses’ driveway, so I could see straight down the side of their house, into their yard (mostly). The shed, and clothes line, and aviary that Les sat in front of for hours at a time. He stood over his wife, shouting something like, Always gonna … what about we eat? Wendy just took it, the washing held firmly under her left arm. She moved to get around him, but he blocked her path. She half-stumbled into a lavender, but he blocked her way back. So she just stood waiting, as he kept shouting: Wait forever, wouldn’t I?

She tried again, brushed against him; he pushed her, she fell onto the ground and the washing went onto the drive. She knelt, started gathering it, but he was leaning over her, letting her have it: If yer good and fuckin’ ready.