According to him, his mum had said, Anne?

That okay? We’ve gotta move on. I can’t watch The Hulk forever.

Although he was having his own Hulk moment. Bruce Banner caught in the gamma radiation of early adolescence, and childhood. An alter ego filling with air, stretching, straining at the joints, ready to explode in a glumph of green.

Then, he’d told me, he’d told them he’d packed his toys in boxes and sealed them, and would they mind driving them to Vinnies? He’d had enough of all that. They needn’t worry about toys any more. Just books. Is that okay with you, Gary?

Gary had said, Where the hell is this coming from?

He’d said, I thought you’d be glad. I’m tired of Uncle Harry too—all that how are you matey crap. What’s the point? I’m ready, you’re ready. I’ve given Clem my comics. I think he’ll take a while, if you know what I mean.

All of this was, and is, apocryphal, of course, but it makes for a good story. He’d seen the world, and decided that childhood was a con. Children were kept childish because adults felt guilty about forcing them to grow up too soon, although that’s what they really wanted. So, a game was played. An education that should’ve taken eight years was spread out over twelve. Gainful employment was denied. Mummy, Daddy, I want an Evel Knievel was invoked, and the whole dreadful process drawn out. But it needn’t be the way. What do you reckon, Anne?

Apparently his dad had hit him so hard he’d gone flying, but I don’t think anyone would believe that. I suspect he saw it somewhere on telly, or a movie. In the same way childhood and adulthood blurred, so did fantasy and reality. There was never a line. Just oil in water. Like his brother with his hand on a pack of fags while the deli guy was in the back room.

Curtis smiled, and I knew it meant trouble. ‘I got some good stuff,’ he whispered.

‘What?’

‘Well.’

He half-ran, crouching, across the yard. I followed. There was a watchtower cubby house, built on stilts, and we climbed the metal steps and went inside. This had always been our refuge. A sort of Colditz unescaped; a fifteen-foot meat locker full of all the wrong things. There was a hole in the floor, and a fireman’s pole, and when you had to go in for tea you’d slide down. On the day of his premature graduation into adulthood Clem had asked his parents (apparently) if it could be dismantled. It would just be an uncomfortable reminder. A week later, of course, we were back inside, planning the invasion of the Greater Reich, laid out below in shades of gun-grey and eucalyptus. From up here (there was a window looking out in each direction) I could see our backyard, into the shed, Pop busy inside; across the road, Les Champness asleep on his porch; the roof of Don’s shop.