September 1996

Guiding my BMW amongst the boy racers in their hot hatches and their baseball caps, I recall my own car-obsessed youth. Arriving home at the village around four o’clock, the streets are thronged with schoolchildren in white shirts, sporting summer-holiday suntans, and my mind goes back to another summer.

Once I arrive at the house, preparations for Dad’s funeral keep me occupied and in the present. It’s the night after that brings the memories really flooding back. The relatives from other towns, the friends and neighbours, have gone. That leaves only the two of us, me and Mum. There’s a lot of what Mum calls ‘sorting out’ to do, but I’ve persuaded her it can wait. I’ve promised to stay for another fortnight and we can start in earnest tomorrow.

For an hour after Mum has gone to bed I look at the television, without watching it. I turn off the sound and flick between channels, letting the images linger for no more than a few seconds. I think of all the times I have watched TV in this lounge with my dad and conjure up a particular memory of being dragged out of bed, a reluctant ten-year-old, to watch Neil Armstrong take his one small step – everyone bleary-eyed at school the next day, because their parents had done the same. As kids who’d grown up with the works of Gerry Anderson it seemed quite probable that we’d be living on the moon when we grew up. I stifle a twinge of Earthbound disappointment.

Eventually I give up the struggle to watch and, preparing for bed, I find that I unconsciously follow my dad’s routine: switching off the TV at the wall, checking the locks, fresh bowl of water for the dog. Ollie watches this interloper from his basket with a reproachful gaze. ‘I miss him too,’ I say, ‘I know how you feel.’

The dog gives me a long-suffering sigh that says he doesn’t think so. I crouch down for a second and scratch between his ears, he twitches his tail in response but I can tell that his heart isn’t in it.

And then I find myself lying in my old room. The room where I’d slept almost every night between the ages of nine and eighteen. Different décor of course, new bed, guest room soullessness, but it is still my room. My room, where I’d snuggled up with a teddy bear named Fred; where I’d read Biggles beneath the covers; where I’d had my first wet dream; where I’d read The IPCRESS File late into the night. Where, on a sultry summer’s morning twenty years ago, my girlfriend and I had yielded our virginity to each other. Where, not long after, I’d wept with grief before another funeral. And finally where I’d torn my heart to shreds, having thrown away the best relationship I’d ever had. There’s a prickling at the corners of my eyes as I reach across to turn out the light.

Sleep doesn’t come easily, there are too many thoughts competing for space in my head. Memories of Dad, lists of things I have to do. But most of all the reflections are of my youth and that long, hot, shining summer, in which I’d loved, lost and learned so much.