‘Ah, but they don’t display themselves, do they? Page three is a joke – just a… woman’s bare chest for a bit of fun.’

‘A pair of knockers.’

‘What?’

There was a pause, and then the man chuckled, and looked away.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘All I know—’

‘That’s what we called them,’ interrupted Michael. ‘That’s what people called them: a right good pair of knockers. “Look at the size of them, eh?” That was how we spoke. That was the kind of thing you’d hear on television, but it was all part of something else. We’d made her body horrible, so it was something to leer at. To lust over. Do you know what I mean? And there was something disgusting about it, always. You know? You’d take the magazine home, and you had to hide it. So sex becomes a shameful thing, and I’m just wondering – how do you grow up normal if you glimpse a woman and she’s… turning herself inside out, in a magazine? It used to terrify me. I used to hate it. And I used to worry that I was abnormal for hating it, while wondering if everyone hated it, but couldn’t say so. Do you know what I mean?’

The man said nothing for a moment, and then he sighed. Michael waited, wondering if his companion was about to say something wise. It was the most serious speech he’d made in weeks, or even months – and he’d made it to a stranger who now seemed to be pondering his response.

‘You’re talking about the objectification of women,’ he might say. ‘You are. You’re talking about attitudes that – yes – can go unchallenged, or… fail to change. It’s sometimes hard to learn new behaviours, isn’t it? That’s what you’re saying, mister.’

Michael would nod.

‘Yes,’ he would reply. ‘I don’t know how I became what I am. I can’t blame magazines, or Mr Trace. Can I? I just long to understand it.’

‘Who was Mr Trace?’

‘My Latin teacher.’

‘What happened? What’s he got to do with it?’

Michael would tell him, and perhaps they would stand together with bowed heads, and finally clasp hands. The old man’s voice would drop to a whisper.

‘Me too,’ he would say.

‘What? You too?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you lost, too?’

‘I’ve been lost all my life. What happened to us? How did we end up here – in Crewe?’

‘Crewe.’

‘Why Crewe?’

The old man was still, but he said nothing at all and the silence only got longer.