Back onto the footpath, across the basketball stadium car park, down Lanark II, past our homes (thankfully everyone was inside), around the corner, past the Colonel, Don, Ford, back across the car park. As it started slowing, and she worked the throttle. ‘It’s running out of electricity.’ She thought better of it, and returned. By the time we parked it was barely going. We ran off, and I said, ‘What happens when she comes out?’

‘She can plug it in.’

‘What if it’s an emergency?’

‘What are the chances? You need to chill out, Clemmy.’

She ate the cold chips.

‘What else did you get up to in your little country town?’ I asked.

‘My little country town?’

‘Did you have your own tractor?’

‘Fuck off. They had real men.’

‘Like?’

‘Daryl, a Year Eleven. Driving a tractor since he was seven. No scribbling novels in your bedroom. Real men.’

‘So, you and Daryl …?’

‘Yep. Every night, for a coupla hours, in the hay shed.’

God, she’d said it. We’d crossed some sort of barrier. ‘You and … Daryl?’

‘Yes, but he was smart, and funny.’

‘Perfect Daryl?’

‘Perfect.’

‘Imaginary Daryl?’

‘He was real, believe me.’

We turned into number 26, up the drive, the front steps, and into the lounge. Mum, busy painting, said, ‘Righto, break time.’

Pop got down from his ladder, stood back and said, ‘Couldn’t tell.’ The panels he’d replaced, the gaps he’d filled, sanded, and undercoated.

Tina came in and said, ‘Like new.’

Vicky opened the chips, laid them on the floor, and Tina said, ‘You’ve eaten them all.’

‘A few.’

Pop started picking at them. Mum said, ‘I’m not hungry.’ But she always said that when there wasn’t enough.

‘Ask you to do one thing,’ Tina said to Vicky. ‘Get some chips for lunch, and you eat them all.’ She sat down, tried a few. ‘And they’re cold.’

‘It’s Don, not me.’ She turned to me. Don’t say anything, Clemmy.

As we ate and drank weak cordial, Mum said to Vicky, ‘After they lay the carpet it’ll be like new.’

We admired the fresh walls, and smelled the paint.

‘New job?’ Pop asked Vicky.

‘Start next week.’

‘Excited?’

‘It’s money. It’ll be good to have some coming in, eh, Mum?’

Tina just smiled, searching for something resembling a chip.

‘Where did you learn to type?’ I asked her.

‘I didn’t.’

‘Really? That might be a problem. Just as well you’ve got shorthand.’

She sort of smiled.

‘No? Dear me, Vicks. I hope they don’t mind.’

‘They know. Maybe they thought I’d pick it up quick.’

‘You will,’ Mum said.

I said to Tina, ‘Vicks was just telling me about Daryl.’

Tina turned to her daughter. ‘Daryl?’

‘You know, you met him. We went to the movies that time?’

‘Did you?’

‘What movie was that?’ I asked.

‘How the hell should I remember?’