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wards.”
    “Keeps them all under control, don’t you, dear?” Alfred said.
    “That must be very rewarding,” I said automatically. I was surprised, though, and I wondered how they would fit in with the City brigade and the housewife Mafia. I couldn’t think of one other man on The Avenue who worked with his hands or one other woman who worked, full stop. I turned my attention to Alex at last. He was staring out of the window, if I remember, his feet kicking at Valerie’s precious Ercol chairs. “And…” I had forgotten his name.
    “Alec,” his father said. “He’s the reason we moved. To get him into St. Peter’s.”
    Then I understood. The children both went, of course. If you lived in The Avenue and you wanted the best grounding for your children, and if you could afford it, then there wasn’t any other choice. Living so close, of course, meant the twins didn’t have to board, so that cut down on St. Peter’s considerable fees a great deal. Even with both of the Charleses working, I reckoned in my head that they must have been on a tight budget to manage. It made sense to move, too. The catchment area was strict; if you didn’t live in the area, it was very unlikely you’d get in, and people wanted their children to get into St. Peter’s. It was the school that produced Oxbridge students, year after year.
    “He’s bright, then,” I said, speaking of him as if he wasn’t in the room.
    “Oh yes,” Sheila said. “He’s mechanically minded like his Dad, but—well, we both of us don’t really know where he got his brains from. He was at the Grammar School, of course, but his teachers there warned us he’d need to get into a good Prep school like St. Peter’s to really get noticed.”
    Alfred took up the narrative. “He’s got ten O Levels.” Alex gave a sigh of exasperation at this. “They gave him such a glowing reference for his maths and physics that St. Peter’s let him in for his final year to take his A’s—we are both very proud.”
    I looked at Alex properly for the first time and found he was blushing, his ears and cheeks flaming, his mouth in a straight line. All he said was “Mum…” in a warning voice. His mother took no notice and continued to talk about him. With a shrug, he returned to staring at the garden and the busy bird table.
    Valerie, who had been floating in and out whilst we were talking, stuck her head through the door and said, “Do come through to the dining room.”
    “Take your drinks through,” I said. “I’ll get some wine.” I didn’t even watch Alex pass by. I don’t think I ever told him that, and I wish I had. When I look back to that first night, I find it hard to believe that I was more interested in finding a mediocre Beaujolais than I was in learning more about him. But then—we were both different people. We were all of us different people.

 
    Chapter 4
     
    “You won’t have heard of me,” my wife said. “Of course, I wasn’t Valerie Johnson back then; I was Valerie Sutton.”
    “Oh but we have! Fancy! Valerie Sutton!” Sheila exclaimed, tackling the stroganoff with something that looked like trepidation. “We follow the tennis, have done for years. We’ve never liked football much.”
    “Not football, no,” added Alfred. “I don’t mind cricket. But always been very fond of tennis. Been up to Wimbledon once or twice, when Alec was younger.”
    “You were very good.”
    “No, not really,” Valerie said.
    “Good enough to get on the circuit, and there’s not many young ladies who can do that,” Alfred said. “Mind you, it’s all Russians and Bulgarians now.”
    Valerie turned to Alex while I opened another bottle. “And do you play tennis, Alec?”
    He shook his head, and Alfred continued. “He’s not a great one for games, I’m afraid. Your wife tells me that you play golf?”
    “When I can,” I said. “Sheila, may I top you up?”
    “When he can,” echoed Valerie. “What he means by that,” she gave me