‘You’ mother nag so?’ his dad asked, looking up at me. ‘Soon done,’ he said, and looked down again.

‘And you don’ think is time I have my feet up like you was promising me the moon to get me in the boat and come? Seasick tek me an’ me neck dangling over the side so! Him fixing me a deck chair on the Titanic, eh?’

I looked at Wilf who rolled his eyes, and at his dad who shrugged and went on fiddling.

‘We’re going now, Mum,’ Wilf said, edging me out the kitchen.

‘Soon come,’ she said and brushed him away and took me by the hand back down the corridor. She picked up a pink feather duster at the door and told me, as she closed it behind us, the front room was ‘for special’.

It was dark because the curtains were half drawn, but there was a radiogram with polished wood she dusted down, pointing at all the dials with the feather duster like she was a fairy with a magic wand, and there was a cloth on top of it with its corners hanging down to form triangles, as well as some small polished side tables in wood and glass with smaller cloths and frilly edges. There were glass cabinets on both sides of the fireplace with long, thin legs that were full of cups and saucers and glasses and ornaments in glass and plastic on glass shelves with glass doors that had yellow and black patterns engraved on them, and it was all mirrored on the inside.

She shook a see-through plastic dome off the mantelpiece that had a palm tree inside and a beach with the word Jamaica written on it so it made a snow storm, and showed me and said, ‘For Christmas.’

She drew the curtains fully closed and put on the side lamps. They had pictures of dominoes in black and white on the shades. She turned round and told me this was where they’d put her when she was dead and it was for me to remind them to take her out of the house feet first because she didn’t want to have to come back and do all the damn dusting and plumping herself like some people who never would lift a finger would like. ‘But you have a nice thing about you,’ she said. ‘You must help your mummy.’ I nodded. ‘And where she from?’

‘Ireland,’ I said.

‘And Daddy?’

‘Africa.’

She put her head back, and peered at me for a moment. ‘Never mind. And you?’ she asked.

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said, ‘From here.’

‘Wilf is a English boy, too,’ she nodded. ‘Don’t let none of that hold you back. You have good in you.’