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have grown but look the same. The same restaurants – or, they look the same. Over everything a film of dust. I think that if I could scrub it off, the city would match what I remember from my childhood: the sparkle, the newness that I felt for much of the time, until Paul’s death cast a shade over it.
    In the streets and the shops, the hotel, the few restaurants I have been into, there are only strangers. I thought maybe I would recognise one or two people from my teenage years. But either they have left or changed so much I cannot recognise them. I do not belong here any more in this familiar city filled with strangers. The echo of home.
    I have been picked up and placed in another time.
    I look in the rearview mirror. There are no cars in the road. There are some parked at the side, but nothing moves. Everyone is at home asleep in front of the television on this Sunday afternoon. I have grown used to London. It is never quiet there. Never quiet enough to lose yourself in your thoughts.
    This emptiness was something I noticed when I arrived. Walking through the airport, my footsteps echoed in the halls. There was no traffic on the roads. The houses next to Peter’s seem empty. The first house is an old bungalow and it has its windows boarded up. The house on the other side looks empty too, and I cannot see the house opposite from the road.
    Perhaps if I stay, I will come to feel differently, get to know this place again, love it even. But there is no chance of that. I will go back to London – though, it is true, I have somewhat burnt my bridges there. My wife has left me. I will be fired from my job very soon, if it hasn’t happened already, as I have not told them why I am not at work. Still, I can find another job and it is not like I need the money anytime soon.
    I smell the tarmac. Another thing that is the same. The smell of the place.
    I drive past my old school. When I get close, I look over at the buildings across fields. They are cream and brown, smaller than I remember. There is an area at the side. It is covered in tar now. I played there during breaks: with marbles, spinning tops. It was covered in gravel and red dirt. I remember the dust on my black shoes. I drew lines in the dirt on them. The shine beneath the dust. I stop the car and get out.
    I am surprised I know the way so well, the way we used to drive, the road we turned into to get up to the main road, the Cape Road. I remember, I can picture, my mother behind the steering wheel. Always her. Dad was at work.
    The details come back: the dust, the roads, the lines on her face.
    It was always my mother driving. This was the same after it happened too. After Paul died, it was the same. Always my mother, as if nothing had happened – for a while at least.
    I would watch her. When it was my turn in the front seat, I would watch the bones of her fingers around the steering wheel, her lips held tight together. She was not someone who did this as a matter of course, not an ungenerous woman, but she was a very careful driver.
    I sometimes thought she was angry with us, with me, for some reason. Perhaps this was only after Paul died. She seemed angry all the time. I suspect this was just a child’s imagination, however. Sad, yes. She would not have been angry with me.
    In this vision, if that’s what to call it, I turn my head and see two other children in the back of the car. They look at me. They have smiles – no, I will call them smirks – on their faces. They have been whispering to each other. Somehow I know it is about me. I turn slowly back and face the road again.
    A car turns the corner further down the road. For a time it is our car. It is our car and I have been left behind at school. I think that if I run fast enough I could catch it at the next light, catch it and grab the handle and tug at it and they would let me in.
    This place has had a strange effect on me. Memories have returned. That is not unexpected of course, but it is the way