The day unravelled. Lunch: Twisties inside an excavated roll. Sarah Scarr and her anaemic offsider collecting bottles for refunds. All lunch, every lunch, since primary school. A commendable work ethic, especially since everyone threw old fruit at them and called them scabs. The meatheads on the oval kicking out-of-season footballs, stopping to lie down, smoke, and off again. That was Gleneagles High—no blazers or First XV rugby; no Head of the River or polished shoes. Not much of anything, really. As though someone had said, I suppose we should make a school, and someone else had replied, Well, money’s a bit tight, but I suppose you’re right. A paddock was found, paths laid, boxes brought in on the back of flat top trucks, craned into position, wired, filled with what passed for teachers, and everyone was happy. Except the kids.

Lunch. What was a thinking man to do? Four-square with the Year Nines? Or just sit and talk, again? Same conversations, same laughs. Like when Lars Westermann let Wendy Vaughan hold his thing in the AV room while we were watching a film about metals. Mr McGarry: You disgusting little shit! The lights coming on, Lars zipping up, laughter and applause (although this mightn’t have happened).

I walked home alone. Same roads, same unmowed lawns; same Toranas on stumps. I waited, crossed North East Road, past Don stocking his freezer with Paddle Pops. Around the block, down Lanark Avenue, again.

I knew it would all be waiting. The world never changed: Pop in his shed, Mum in her kitchen, Jen home already, because Feres (70—80: borderline deficiency) only gave her four hours a day. It’s magic, you know. All was quiet in the Sharpes’ front yard. It was too early for Ernie to head to the Windsor, Fi-Fi in tow. But Peter Donnellan was out, dressed in Ghandi-white, on his knees pulling gorse from his garden of almost every weed in the world. He looked up and said, ‘How was school?’

‘Shit.’

‘Really?’ He wiped his forehead, and squinted to see me against the sun. ‘Why’s that?’

‘Another year of it.’

He returned to work. I wanted to ask him why he was bothering. He had a small pile, but they’d already seeded. I liked Peter. Like Dave, he’d worked out who he was, and settled on the disappointment. He’d taught me the pointlessness of qualifications, ambition, the need to get ahead. To him, the pulling of a weed, the netting of a fruit tree, the placing of his brother in his spot in the yard, were what mattered. I could see, even then, how you could be happy. Like everyone in Lanark Avenue, I guessed. All failures, in their own way. Then he said, ‘You’ve always said that.’

‘What?’

‘School. Even when you were a little tacker. Remember? You’d walk past, I’d say, How’s school? You’d grumble.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘You did.’