When we got home, Mum said, ‘We gave up looking.’

Jen was talking funny, because Pop’s fist had split the meaty bit on the inside of her mouth. But that was all. It’d heal, and as he came in, she said, ‘Jesus, Pop, I’m gonna have to look out for you.’

He stood waiting, and she went to him, and he put his arm around her, and she stayed there, like she’d do in her pre-Feres days, when she thought ponytails were an okay hairdo, and Leif Garrett ruled the world.

‘I’m just a silly old man,’ he said.

And then I could see that she was crying. But she wouldn’t lift her head, cos she didn’t want us to see. I guess she was scared of losing him, too.

‘Nothing broken?’ he asked.

A hall with a Country Women’s smell and an urn bubbling in the corner. A raised platform and a spot for the mayor and his deputy (I guessed) and someone taking notes. And in front of this, two long tables, a selection of councillors lined up like they mattered. There was a cricket-Gary, with burns and a wide tie, and a Head of English-Sue, with her hair up, studying her notes; a few middle-aged accountants and a strangely out-of-place Kiernan with ponytail hair and a tie-dye shirt.

We sat along a wall, waiting. Peter said, ‘We’re number two.’

Peter: in a suit he’d salvaged from the back of his wardrobe, yellowing shirt like some nineteenth-century frontispiece, and a woollen tie with a knot like a tumour. His pants were up to his ankles, revealing Menzies socks with crying diamonds and, although he’d polished his old leather shoes, they looked like something he’d worn to school during the Blitz. He smelt like mothballs. He’d combed his hair and beard but it was still Catweazle. He didn’t make a convincing lawyer.

‘What you gonna say?’ I asked.

But he just smiled, like he was withholding a crucial piece of evidence.

There was a portrait of the Queen, and we were made to stand while someone read an oath. Then a sort of town crier said, All ye who have business here, make yeself known, and Peter smiled again, and I said, ‘Is this for real?’

Proceedings began. A man named Moore claimed his neighbour had built a fence six inches onto his land, but the neighbour disagreed. Peter said, ‘I hate this sort of shit.’

‘Weren’t you a lawyer?’ Six years down the drain, I guessed. But if your heart wasn’t in it. ‘Did you have many cases?’

‘A couple, but I lost them all.’

‘You coulda made good money.’

‘Les, that was what done it. I shouldn’t say …’

‘Go on.’

‘One night, there’s Wendy at the door, and she comes in and says, I’ve decided.’