Val had told me this story over and over, as I sat in her kitchen drinking tea, imagining Mr Donnellan coming home, embracing his stiff-muscled son, saying how bloody beautiful life was in Lanark Avenue. She’d told me all about him. A bow tie on Sundays. Braces that pulled his pants up his bum (as she and the boys laughed). How he helped Pop build his shed of many Datsuns. How he mowed his lawn every Saturday morning, in praise of the Australian way; pruned the roses in the first week of July; brewed beer that always went bad; told his sons how, one day, with a bit of hard work, they could be running the country.

How he woke up one autumn morning in 1958, went out to pick the paper off the drive, leaned forward and dropped dead with a stroke. How they all ran out, but how he was already halfway cold.

And that’s where she’d stop talking about him. Because, by then, David would be crying. Fourteen-year-old David, running out with his brother, shaking his dad, refusing to concede that life would change because of this moment.

The tea was so strong you couldn’t drink it. But I had to. It stayed on the gums, under the tongue, so I soaked it up with more of Mum’s cake.

‘Your Pop’d do anything for anyone,’ Val said. ‘Compared to him …’

She cocked a thumb in the direction of Ernie Sharpe.

‘If we could move, we would, wouldn’t we, David?’

‘Yes.’

‘Nothin’ against no one else … but him.’

Every conversation came back to Ernie and his hate of cats.

‘I was saying to David (wasn’t I, David?) that he won’t be happy till we’ve gone. Then he can see this place knocked down, and he’ll have a party, I suppose.’

‘What’s he been saying?’

She indicated a picture on the wall and told me it was Slapton, a beach her and Mr D’d go to before the boys came along. ‘Threatenin’ to call the council again. Only three are mine, I told him, but he says they’re all mine, and I never fixed none. But I did. Didn’t I, David?’

‘Yes.’

Tea and cake. I couldn’t afford to take sides.

‘But it’s not like they’re hurtin’ anyone, are they, Clem?’

‘No.’

‘I do put a bit of food out for them, but it’d be cruel not to. They’d starve.’

I tried. ‘What’s he want you to do?’

‘I dunno.’

‘What’s Ida say?’

‘She keeps out of it.’

The conversation slowed. Another picture of another beach, in Wales. ‘Maybe you could sell some,’ I said.

‘How would I go about that?’

‘Put an ad in the paper.’

She took a moment to think, then said, ‘I’ll give it some thought.’

‘Maybe Ernie’d help?’

‘No, not that man. He poisons them.’

‘Really?’