at number twenty, the old man stands by the window, waiting for the kettle to boil, watching the twin brothers creeping into the garden of number seventeen, raised up on the fronts of their feet like a couple of Inspector Clouseaus.
The old man pushes his fingers into the thick white strands of his hair, he watches.
The boys are carrying elaborate waterguns, bright coloured plastic, blue cylinders and pink pressure pumps, green barrels and triggers, and they move to stand either side of the open front-room window, pressing flat against the wall like miniature sentries in a Swiss clocktower.
The kettle behind him sighs its way to a boil, and he watches the boys plunge their heads and arms into the billow of the drifting net curtain, their thin high voices echoing up to his window.
They re-emerge, they turn and they run from the garden, waving their guns like cowboys and indians, their faces hysterical with laughter and excitement and fear. A young man with wet hair appears at the window, shouting, wiping his face with the palm of his hand.
The old man laughs quietly. He likes the twins, they’re funny, they remind him of his great-nephew, the same energy, the same cheek. He laughs again, and the breath whistles in the top of his lungs, the pain is suddenly there again, like cotton thread being yanked through his airways, the whistling getting louder, the hot red streaks beginning to splinter across his vision and he leans against the worktop, gulping for oxygen, jaw flapping, a fish drowning in air.
The kettle shrieks to a boil. The lid rattles with the pressure of the steam.
Downstairs, the man with the carefully trimmed moustache is getting dressed. He is standing in front of a mirror, fastening the top button of a crisp white shirt. He combs his thin black hair, straight down at the back, straight down at the sides, either side of a straight central parting on the top. He puts the comb back in its plastic wallet and takes a bowtie from the open leather suitcase on his table, where he keeps all his clothes. He loops it around his collar, lifting his head to tie the knot, adjusting it, tweaking at the corners until he gets it straight.
Upstairs, the old man clutches at his throat, head tipped back, mouth gaping, silent, staring at the ceiling like a tourist in the Sistine Chapel.
It took me a long time to get to sleep that night.
The rain was still spattering against the window, and there was a loud fall of water from a broken gutter onto the concrete below.
I blocked my ears with the bedcovers, I breathed slowly and deeply, I counted to a hundred, I counted to five hundred.
I gave up eventually, and put the light on, and sat up in bed to read.
But I couldn’t concentrate, I kept thinking about that day, that moment, the afternoon.
About what happened and why there are so many names I can’t remember.
About whether I knew the names in the first place.
Whenever I tried to read my book the images kept returning, small moments from that day and I don’t understand why I can’t leave it alone.
It’s a strange feeling, almost like a guilty feeling, almost like I feel responsible.
I thought about going back up to my room that morning, after a shower and a mouthful of breakfast.
Swinging the window open, and the flood of fresh summer air that had come sweeping in, the sweetness of a rolling wind that was still clean from the countryside.
Seeing the guy from over the road poking his head through an attic skylight and tipping a bucket of water over some kids in their front garden.
I tried to remember his name, and all I could remember was the ring through his eyebrow, the way he used to smack the palm of one hand with the back of the other.
I remembered how hard it was to pack, how I spent the morning rearranging boxes and bags and rewriting lists.
I hadn’t known what I was going to need, what I should throw away or leave behind, what I should give to someone for safekeeping.
I still hadn’t known where I was going.
I remembered phoning the landlord and asking for another week, and panicking when he said people were due to move in the next evening.
I remembered looking at my overflowing room, and the empty boxes, and not knowing where to begin.
I thought about how I’d gone and stood in Simon’s room for a while, looking at the sunlight brightening and fading on the ceiling.
Thinking about him leaving the week before, and how bare his room was now.
The unfaded squares on the wall where his posters had been.
The naked mattress on the floor, a curve in the middle where the springs had begun to fail.
And the things he’d left behind, unable to fit them into the boxes he’d squeezed into his dad’s car.
Coathangers in the wardrobe that rattled like skeletons when I stood on the loose floorboards.
A muted noticeboard on the desk, pimpled with drawing pins.
A paper lightshade he’d taken down but left behind, folded on the floor like a deflated accordion.
The room had a hardness in it without his things there, an emptiness that made me want to close the door, leave a do not disturb sign outside, let the dust settle.
I remembered going to the shops to buy binbags, and saying hello to the boy at number eighteen.
He was on his doorstep, reading, and I caught his eye and he smiled so I said hello.
I think it was the only time I ever spoke to him.
He said how are you doing, how’s the packing going, he said it with a little laugh, as though it was a joke.
Oh I said, fine I said, and I wondered how he knew that’s what I was doing.
There was a silence, and we looked at each other, and I noticed he was blinking a lot and I thought he looked nervous.
He said, last day of summer, everyone’s packing aren’t they, and he did the little laugh again, and I said well you know, all good things come to an end and he said yes.
I said well I’d better get to the shop, I’ll see you around, yes he said, yes, okay, well, see you then.
And he held up his hand, a wave like half a surrender, and by the time I walked back he had gone.
I remembered going back to my room and trying to imagine it being like Simon’s.
I took a poster off the wall to see how much the sunlight had faded the paint in the time I’d been there.
I took all my clothes out of the wardrobe and made the coathangers rattle.
I
