Vicky had helped for an hour: short shorts and work shirt, borrowed boots and hiking socks. Quite the modern woman, although I did keep my eyes to myself. Then she’d had to go in, shower, and get a bus for a job interview. Secretarial, although she couldn’t type or take shorthand. But she’d just said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll convince them.’

‘Despite not knowing what to do?’

‘The right person, Clemmy. You can teach a monkey to type.’

‘Really?’

She’d punched my arm, hard enough for a bruise. Which, I guessed, I’d wash lovingly every night until it faded.

Back and forth. Pop said, ‘I’m too old for this.’

Ernie’d had enough. ‘A hundred and fifty for the day and he’d clear this lot out. I’m too old.’

‘You’re too old?’ Pop said.

Silence, as the wilderness was contemplated, and we listened to the ladies, inside number 26, laughing and talking about whatever women talk about.

‘Bita spirit,’ Pop said. ‘That’s what we’re gonna need: bita spirit. Let’s get it started.’ As he pushed, pulled, spat on his hands, wiped sweat from his forehead, bulged from his singlet. ‘Come on, you two, I’m the old bastard.’

Then, finally, the cracking of wood, splintering of fibre, as the fig groaned and laid itself out, defeated. Ernie cut the sinew and Pop pushed it with his foot. ‘One down. What’s next?’

‘The lemon tree,’ Ernie said.

Pop wasn’t sure. ‘We better ask.’

‘She wants them all gone. Her words.’

It was a big tree, with healthy limbs, although, since it hadn’t been watered in years, its fruit was small, scrotal. I said, ‘Bita water and fertiliser, it might come good.’

‘All gone,’ Ernie repeated.

‘Strange she left it,’ Pop said.

‘Why?’ Ernie asked.

He didn’t reply.

‘That’s the tree he used,’ I said.

‘You don’t know that,’ Pop growled.

‘See, that big branch.’

‘Don’t say what you don’t know.’

Ernie was a gossip. ‘How do you know?’

‘We know,’ Pop said.

We all saw Ossie moving in the breeze, his feet brushing against the trunk.

‘Pity,’ Ernie said.

‘Pity,’ Pop agreed. ‘He was a decent sorta fella, wasn’t he, Clem?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Gave you them books, eh?’

All this made me wonder whether we should chop it down. ‘Maybe we should ask Tina.’

Pop wasn’t so sentimental. He stood and said, ‘Yer gotta move on,’ took the pruning saw from Ernie and approached it. Picked the narrowest part of the trunk and began.

It felt strange. The object of my and Curtis’s fascination for so long. The number of times we’d examined it for rope marks, imagined the day, the moment, the result, the ambulance, the crying and screaming and shouting, the neighbours (some we’d never met) gathering with their arms crossed, asking what had happened. Pop sawed without pausing, determined.