Jen appeared from her room. ‘Why you upsetting everyone?’

I ignored her. ‘He was showing me around the whole street. He’d painted my room, he’d done everything to get ready. Why would he go?’

She switched the mixer on.

Jen said, ‘You’re such an arse.’

Pop came in from the shed. ‘What is it?’

I turned to him. ‘I just asked about Dad.’

Four people in a kitchen, waiting.

‘You made him go!’ I said to Mum.

‘I didn’t!’

Jen took my arm and tried to pull me from the kitchen. I shook free. ‘I just want to know!’

‘Enough!’ Pop shouted.

Silence, again, apart from the mixer. Mum started crying, turned, and ran from the kitchen, the house.

Jen said, ‘You’re such a selfish shit!’

Pop was always the practical one. He turned off the mixer and glared at me. ‘Certainly wasn’t the way to go about it, was it?’

‘What way is there?’

‘Wait.’

‘How long?’

‘As long as it takes.’ And he went back to the shed.

The murals had weathered. Mud-splattered, with chutney smears from an unloved sandwich, Mr Champness’s other finger inserted up his nose. Someone had scraped the legs and arms off a koala. It was always going to happen. We’d warned Nick. So, he’d come out with repair pots, to fix things, and said, ‘If you keep at it they’ll stop.’

Curtis had disagreed. ‘You oughta see what’s in the boys’ change rooms.’

The school that time forgot. Society, anyway. Tweed-jacketed nose pickers fondling igneous rocks as boilers hissed sweet nothings to puberty blue Leeanes in search of homemaking skills. Some schools put their slow learners into remedial classes, and at least tried. At Gleneagles they were placed in an opportunity class. Followed the groundsman around all day, pulling weeds, fixing fences. A message to the rest of us (or according to Curtis, trying to impress the canteen sluts): ‘Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate.’

Nick had sealed the murals and we’d signed them, and the rest of the school had called them gay, and piss-weak, but, inspired by our Great Leader, we’d ignored them. ‘The life of the artist in a cultural urinal,’ he’d explained. Going on to say how the place was all sport because dull people liked dull pastimes. ‘Artists have always been victimised. Anyway, you really want to end up like …?’ But had stopped, realising he had a few footballers in the class.

So, we’d moved on to portraiture. A girl called Tracey had volunteered, and sat at the front. Nick had gathered us around, shown us how to draw axes, tilt the head, get the dimensions right, add a nose and mouth. Then he’d given us paper and charcoal and said, ‘See what you can come up with.’