‘It was on special.’

‘Thanks anyway.’

‘Make sure you use it.’

‘Did Mum buy it?’

‘No, she did bloody not. I bought it.’

I studied the little blue bottle. It was the best present ever. My Pop had bought it for me, his grandson. He’d walked to the shops, thought, purchased, and even wrapped. Imagine that? Pop wrapping something up. I knew, then, I’d never use it. I’d keep it to show my kids so they could understand how people worked.

‘I thought Mum bought the presents?’

‘You thought wrong. Anyway, since we’re travelling together …’ He checked his list. ‘Toiletries?’

‘Inside.’

‘Don’t let your mother see.’

Maybe I was grinning.

‘So what?’ he said. ‘I bought you something. Tyre pressure gauge?’

‘There.’ I pointed.

‘There’s something else in there.’

A one pound note. Old. English. I smelt, felt it, examined the fading image of the king. ‘That’s an old one,’ I said.

‘You’ll need to look after it.’

Why give someone a pound? What was a pound even worth? A dollar? Two? Was he trying to be generous, somehow?

‘Thanks for that, I’ll buy something with it.’

‘You can’t.’

‘No?’

‘No one’ll accept it. Anyway, it’s not for spending. It’s so you remember.’

‘What?’

He took a moment. ‘When I was nineteen I went to England.’

‘I never knew that.’

‘Got a job and saved a bita money. Bought a ticket, six weeks on a steamer. The Orion. Heard of it?’

‘No.’

‘Anyway, arrived in London, got drunk, worked in a meat-packing store, saved some more money, travelled around—Stonehenge, Edinburgh—all over the place.’

‘Why’d you never say anything?’

‘Met a nice girl, but a week or so later …’

I studied the pound note. I thought I knew why.

‘Time was up. I came home, met yer Nan, got a job and settled down. And that’s how it’s been, ever since.’ He took the note. ‘And this … this was the last pound I come home with. The only one I didn’t spend.’

‘So it’s pretty old?’

‘Pretty.’ He returned it. ‘You keep it.’

‘Why?’

‘To remind you.’

‘What?’

‘Fifty years I been lookin’ at it, and every time I’ve thought, I shoulda stayed longer, or shoulda gone back, travelled to America, France, all over the place. It’s a big world, Clem.’

‘I’ve heard.’

‘Staying here, that’s okay, but you only live once, eh?’

I put it in my wallet. It seemed strange, carrying a regret in your pocket for that long. ‘You reckon I should travel?’

‘Yep, go see it all. Don’t believe what they say about university, or getting a good job. That’ll all come in time, but you gotta go. Sit on the lion in Trafalgar Square.’

‘You reckon?’

‘I think back now, that was the happiest day of my life. Sittin’ there, nothin’ to do, no money.’

Silent, again. He wasn’t forgetful. There was no Alzheimer’s.

‘Mortgage, that’s what kills a man,’ he said. ‘Mort, from the Latin for death. That’s what it is: a little death, every day, till you forget.’