Place was all closed up, and the back entrance had barbed wire and a padlock big as my head. You know what I was doing there, don’t you?’

Should he? ‘What was that, Duval?’

‘Oh, come on, you must know,’ he said. Then perhaps sensing he’d only be disappointed again, he went on. ‘I was going to see the Secret Garden. All these years I could imagine it, and then when I get there it was all locked up.’

Christ, thought Robert, he must have known it wasn’t real. Of course they’d just been kids, when you could believe almost anything, but by now Duval had to know it had just been a fantasy.

Duval said, ‘I was going to go through the alley by the apartment and have a look that way, but they got a big gate up there too. I didn’t know really how I could explain myself if they asked what I was doing there.’

I can see that, thought Robert. It was not that there was anything physically threatening about Duval: he remained a beanpole; there was no evidence of weightlifting, no bulk there. But there was something disconcerting about his deep gaze, and how he stifled any laugh. The way his conversation veered around topics, moreover, suggested that the internal verbal mechanism of social discourse was slipping in and out of gear, like a car jerkily driven by a learner.

Duval reached inside his jacket and drew out a thin billfold of faded leather. ‘I got something to show you,’ he said with a sly smile, and handed over a small snapshot – it was framed by a tiny margin that had gone brown with age.

Robert peered at it, then held the photo up to the light. In the middle of the tiny square he could make out Vanetta, standing in a kitchen, facing the camera in a white skirt and a dark blouse. She had her arms around a boy on either side, and he could see that it was the young Duval, dressed in a white shirt and dark trousers, as if for church. He wouldn’t have been more than eight or nine, and his front teeth stuck out as he smiled for the camera.

On Vanetta’s other side the boy was white, shorter than Duval, with dark hair and dark eyes. Robert realised it was a picture of himself.

‘That’s us,’ he exclaimed. Why was he so surprised?

‘You remember when it was taken? It was Vanetta’s birthday. She had just moved to the house on Morgan.’

‘You got a good memory, Duval.’

‘I’ve had a lot of time for remembering,’ Duval said quietly. He reached out and took back the little snapshot. ‘I can’t be losing this now. It survived my whole time inside.’

You could get a copy made, Robert thought, but something held him back from saying so. Duval had kept this photo with him during all those years in prison, like a lucky charm. To think that Robert hadn’t had Duval in his head for years.

‘Are you working, Duval?’

‘Not yet. They trained me, but only as a TV repairman.’

‘Are you getting by?’

‘I’m trying my best, and Jermaine ain’t asking much rent. I get benefit. It’s okay,’ he said. His voice was increasingly familiar to Robert, but he realised there was no mystery to this – it was simply an older version of the voice he’d known almost forty years before. And he still spoke in the tone of passive acceptance which Robert now remembered. When they were boys Robert would say, ‘Want to play whiffle ball?’ Okay. Or, ‘Want to go to Sarnat’s?’ Okay.

‘Could you use a loan, Duval?’ He had been expecting to say this, he realised, and part of him wanted to give Duval money so he wouldn’t have to see him again. How much should he offer – a couple of hundred dollars? That wouldn’t last long.