‘I always told your mum,’ she said. ‘He’ll do something creative. Remember those plays you used to write?’

‘Yes.’

‘That’s something you could do. That one with the sock puppet … you had us all laughing.’

I feigned some sort of look, mouth open, lost, as if I had no recall, no memory of sock puppets and Alf Garnett-inspired rants on the porch of number 33. Val knew me as a seven-year-old, and always would. Size didn’t matter.

‘Your hands were so small …’ She put down her cup and examined each of my fingers. ‘Remember when you tried the piano?’

‘For a while.’

‘We thought you’d go good on that with yer long fingers. They’re still long, aren’t they?’ She stared at them, but seemed to be moving beyond digits. ‘Fay reckons you’ve got a guitar?’

‘Yes.’

‘Reckons yer not half-bad.’

Although Mum would never say that to me. ‘I was thinking of starting a band.’

David moved in his chair, as if this idea excited him. I turned to him and said, ‘You were in a band, weren’t you?’

‘Yes … folk band. I played the drums.’

They were still in his room, but you couldn’t mention them. Mum reckoned it would’ve been better for Val to sell them instead of leaving them where he could see them every day. ‘Pretty hard, eh?’ I said. ‘To play the drums?’

He managed to nod. ‘If you wanna get good … it takes forever.’ Then his head dropped, and he was gone.

‘Your dad …’ Val said.

I waited. ‘Did he play something?’

She picked up her tea, and drank. ‘I think Fay said something about it.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I can’t remember.’ But her face suggested she did. I knew, she knew, she had no right talking about him. If it got back to Mum there might be all sorts of trouble. Instead: ‘Pop still gettin’ plenty of work?’

‘Still does a few, but it takes him forever. I think people get sick of waiting and go other places.’

‘Likes his cars?’

‘I help him when I can, but there’s not much work. Not enough to make it worthwhile. But if he wasn’t doing it …’

‘Yes.’

That’s all. One word, which was hundreds. Yes. Val thinking perhaps: He’d go downhill even quicker. ‘He used to have five or six lined up out the front. People knew him, and they came, and paid him good too.’ She wrapped her hands around her cup again. I took a few gulps, to move things along as quickly as possible. But then thought, Why? Where am I going?

‘Good man, your pop.’ Her head dropped; she was off, again, holding the tea and cinnamon cake, but not eating. Stopping, refilling her cup before smiling at me. ‘More?’

I had to say yes.

Despite what Mum said, Lanark Avenue had had many good men. Pop had told me about Mr Donnellan, gathering his wife, his two beaming boys, and setting off for Australia. Leaving behind the broken bricks and grey, exhausted hours; the small tobacco shop that had never turned a profit.