‘Let me guess: he was a bad seed, drank, ran around with the wrong people … close?’ A half-smile. ‘Stole, got in trouble with the police?’

‘That’s pretty much it.’

‘That’s one version.’

We got our choc-tops, and Don said, ‘He’s been asking about you for years.’

We crossed onto the grass in front of the basketball stadium and sat at a smoking table, covered in burns. ‘You like writing?’ my father asked.

I wondered who’d told him. Don? Me watching him, making notes, him saying, ‘What cher doin’?’ Me saying, ‘They reckon you should write about what you know.’

I licked chocolate from my fingers. ‘I didn’t believe everything.’

October

‘Good. When me and yer mum first come here, all this was countryside.’ He indicated, with a sticky hand. ‘Everyone thought it was the future. Then we got building, and I helped Sid and Ernie, and they helped me, and it wasn’t long before we had a street.’

He said it like, I built it for you and Jen.

‘And that’s how it was at the start. Don built his shop a little while later, and he was the only place on this stretch of North East Road.’ As we watched the traffic pass.

‘He never talked to me that much.’

‘There was a reason.’

I got it. Don refusing to tell tales.

‘I just met a few dickheads,’ Dad said. ‘But that happens.’

‘I know a few.’

‘John?’

‘He ran off.’

‘I know all about it. He’s still around.’

‘And Curtis.’

‘You don’t always choose your friends, eh?’

I could hear Don: Hi, Wilf. Seen your boy, and this Curtis, the other day. Don’t want to talk, but he was smoking a cigarette.

‘So how you been, Clem?’

What could you say? There were too many years to summarise. ‘Gettin’ along.’

‘You always did that. You were placid. Jen’d cry and scream, but you’d just sit there watching everyone, like you were making your mind up.’

‘What’s Don told you?’

‘Enough. Every coupla weeks. In there for an hour sometimes. You came in once, and I just read a magazine.’

‘No. What’d I say?’

‘Nothing. Minimum chips. Didn’t even see me watchin’ you.’

The ice creams had collapsed, but we kept going.

‘Why’d you wait so long?’

He explained, the letters (which she’d burned), saying, No, I haven’t found anyone else, and maybe I could take them out someplace, and if it worked, move back with yers. ‘Did that for a coupla years,’ he said. ‘But it never made no difference.’

‘She knows how to hold a grudge,’ I said.

‘You’re telling me.’

‘She was pissed off when I went with Pop, on this trip.’

He almost laughed. ‘I told him, years ago, It’s a fake, but he wouldn’t listen. So, when yers left …’

‘You knew?’