I didn’t believe it. He liked cars, and wouldn’t be anywhere else doing anything different. Forty, fifty degrees, it didn’t matter; he wasn’t happy unless he was in the shed. It was his version, minus the titty calendars, of the garage he’d worked in for fifty years, before he’d retired, or been made to. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘what about your Nan?’

I knew he’d mention her. Nan, sitting with her Dickens, her New World Encyclopedias, saying, Clem, you done yer homework?

Yes, Nan.

I found this bit here, about the planets.

I finished, Nan.

And all the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. Isn’t that what they were asking about?

I finished, Nan.

But Nan would never accept that. You were never finished; you could always do a bit more, make it better. Twenty years of scrubbing pub floors, that’s why you had to know the moons of Jupiter, and how the rings weren’t really rings.

‘She’d turn in her grave,’ Pop said, removing the last of the leads.

That made it difficult to argue. I knew that’s one thing she’d want: me as a matriculant, university, perhaps, probably, definitely. ‘What about some sort of management—’

‘Jesus, Clem!’ He knocked his head on the bonnet. ‘You just go on and on. It’s decided!’

No, it’s not, I thought, but dared not say.

‘What’s the big bloody deal? A few months outa yer life then you can go do whatever you want. But … for your mother’s sake.’

I wasn’t all that worried, but thought it worth a try. He or Mum might’ve said, Of course, get the paper, apply to a few places. Manager at Tom the Cheap grocery, that’d be okay. Earn a bit of money, help with a car on the weekend. It was worth a try, but it wasn’t worth getting him pissed off.

He waved a spanner in my face. ‘Nan’s every second thought was you and Jen. None of us got a decent education. Now you can get your degree for free. Why wouldn’t you?’

I smelled the rooms, the labs, the fingernail-yellow paper in the books; heard Mrs Dent praising Shakespeare; saw the lads with their too-tight shorts on the oval kicking balls that would last until lunch, beyond, into a future of shallow trenches and full-forwards and seven kids with mixing-bowl haircuts. Which was reason enough, perhaps, to do as Pop asked. ‘Didn’t say I wouldn’t go back.’

‘Well, stop going on about it.’ He sat, picked up his Port Royal and started rolling a smoke. After he got it tight he licked it, lit it, sat back and inhaled.

What you thinking about? I wanted to ask, but didn’t. What was the point? Life was just something you got on with, apparently.