All of which might lead you to ask, why hadn’t Pop fixed it? But that was, and is, life: mechanics with their shitty cars, teachers with their innumerate kids. But despite all this, it just kept going, and now it was my turn. L-plates. Seatbelts (done yours up, Pop?). I checked my mirrors, started the engine and reversed into Lanark Avenue. Driving too long in first before stopping, indicating and turning into Dragon Street, past the basketball stadium with its sub-floor vents for disposing of uneaten lunches. I stopped again, listening to the clunk of the spastic blinker. Pop said, ‘You don’t need to keep stopping.’

‘You’re meant to.’

In his day (so the speech went) you could walk into a police station, hand over a couple of quid, fill in a form and whacko, there was your driver’s licence. He couldn’t see the point of all this mucking around.

‘That’s what they look for in the test,’ I said.

No reply.

‘Lose eight points, you’re done. If you don’t come to a full stop—’

‘Okay, I got yer.’

We turned onto North East Road: two lanes of normally heavy traffic, but it was mad dogs and Englishmen, so there were just a few trucks, a bus, and I said, ‘Went up the back of one of those.’

‘Eh?’

‘I was riding behind a bus and it slammed on the brakes, and I went up the back.’

He refused to be drawn, although I knew he was listening.

‘Just picked up my bike, got onto the footpath …’ I wrestled into fourth, braked hard, nearly did it again.

‘Watch yerself.’

I waited to get around. ‘No one stopped, asked how I was. Even the people walking past. Didn’t I ever tell you?’

He didn’t say I had or hadn’t; whether he remembered or not. Maybe he was searching his head, the chip-crumb memories.

We drove in silence. Me, following the rules, him, trying to remember. ‘What did I say we needed?’

‘Plugs, leads, filters, coolant, and more oil.’

He turned to me. ‘I didn’t say that, did I?’

‘Yes.’

‘We’ve got plenty of oil.’

‘That’s what you said.’

‘Ah.’ As he imagined the drum, I suppose, and listened to how it sounded when you knocked on the side. ‘Well …’

Stoplights. We rolled. I applied the handbrake, but it didn’t make any difference. How about we tighten it, Pop, I’d asked, and he’d agreed it needed to be done.

‘Just thinkin’ …’

‘What’s that?’

‘If that quack’s right.’

He was starting to think that the doctor might know best. The proof was everywhere. After all these years you couldn’t ignore the lost bankbooks and shoes left on the lawn and the forgotten name of the orange stuff on your dinner plate.

‘If he’s right?’ I said.

‘Then you can help.’