We had walked for about an hour, although I had no idea where we’d been. When we arrived back at the house Mum was waiting in the kitchen.

‘Angela rang  …  you’d better sit down,’ she said. I heard a catch in her voice and she smoothed her hands in a nervous action on the front of her dress.

I knew at that moment that Craig was dead but I sat; Penny held my hand on top of the table, and I let Mum tell me anyway.

‘He never regained consciousness.’

I sat very still for a moment then put my head in my hands and wept. Penny put an arm round my heaving shoulders. Mum made tea, adding a generous measure of my dad’s whisky to each mug.

Around fifteen minutes must have elapsed before I pulled myself back together. I began to wonder what I should do. I thought of going straight back round to see Craig’s mum; but then decided that she would have enough to deal with and I’d only be in the way. Then another thought struck me. ‘I wonder if anyone’s told Deborah?’

Penny looked at me, her lips drawn into a tight line. ‘I think we should go round.’ I was glad she said that ‘we’, I don’t think I could have faced doing it on my own.

‘Yes,’ said my mum, clearing the cups away. ‘It’ll be better coming from friends.’

So Penny and I went out again and walked down to the Masters’ house. As we drew near I saw Deborah standing in the lounge window. She had the front door open as we walked up the path. ‘Is it about Craig? How is he? I heard on the radio. I tried ringing his house a few times but there was no answer, I  …  I  …’ Her eyes were shining with held back tears.

I opened my mouth to speak but Penny got there first. ‘I think we’d best go inside,’ she said.

Deborah took us into the lounge. A black and white cat was curled asleep on the windowsill; a blue budgerigar, in a tall cage, chirped and watched us enter with a tilted head; a picture of white horses galloping through surf hung on the wall above the fireplace. We arranged ourselves around the room before anyone spoke again. I sat in an armchair, Penny and Deborah sat next to each other on the sofa.

‘Have you been to the hospital?’ asked Deborah.

‘Yes,’ I replied, my mouth dry.

‘How is he?’ She was fumbling for a handkerchief. I felt tears begin to form at the corners of my own eyes once more.

‘Deborah, he’s  …’ I didn’t quite believe what had happened myself. There was no easy way to tell someone else, so I took a deep breath and forced myself to say it. ‘He’s dead.’ I stared down at the swirly brown pattern on the carpet, unable to look Deborah in the face.

The room was quiet. For a few moments the only sound was the twittering of the bird, then she sobbed. ‘No.  No, he can’t be.’

Penny took her by the hand and said, ‘It’s true, he was in a coma and, well, he never woke up. It was very peaceful.’ I was half aware that someone had come in through the front door during this exchange but my senses were somewhat dulled by the whisky, and my attention was concentrated on the tragedy playing out in the lounge.

Deborah spoke again, her voice rising. ‘No, no, no! He can’t, he can’t, not when I’m pregnant.’ The final word left a hole in the air like a sonic boom. I could read the shock on Penny’s face; even the budgie fell silent.

Then the lounge door burst open and Deborah’s dad entered: thickset, balding, bespectacled, and angry. ‘You’re what?’ He looked at Deborah with a searing, laser beam stare.

She looked away. ‘Pregnant,’ she said in a whisper.

‘Pregnant!’ her dad thundered. His hands reformed into tight fists and his face reddened, he looked at me and took a pace forward. ‘Is this the lad? I’ll bloody kill him!’ He took another step and raised his fist; I pressed myself back hard into the chair, tensing for the blow.

‘No!’ yelled Deborah, tears running down her cheeks. ‘It’s not him.’ Her voice faltered then she added more quietly, ‘It’s Craig.’

‘Then I’ll bloody kill him!’ said her dad, turning to face her. ‘Where’s the randy little twat live?’

‘You’re too late,’ I said, my voice flat.

‘What do you mean, too late?’ Mr Masters whirled to face me again.

‘He’s dead … a road accident. Th-that’s why we came.’

He seemed to shrink then. His fists uncurled and became hands again, his shoulders slumped. The colour disappeared from his face as though someone had wiped it away with a cloth. He crouched down in front of Deborah and looked up at her stricken features. ‘Oh, darling, precious, I’m so sorry, I  …  I  …  It’ll be all right. We’ll sort everything out, I promise.’

I looked at Penny and inclined my head towards the door. She nodded and we both stood. ‘We’d better be off,’ I said.

Deborah’s dad straightened up and said, with reflex politeness, ‘You won’t stop for some tea?’

‘No,’ I said, a little too fast, ‘we should go.’

Penny turned to Deborah. ‘If you want someone to talk to, you know where I am.’ Deborah nodded and sniffed into her hankie. Her dad showed us to the front door.

‘Thanks for coming,’ he said, and I wondered for a moment why we thank people for delivering bad news. Then he looked at me and said, ‘And I’m sorry for thinking  …’ His voice trailed off.

‘That’s okay.’ I shook his hand, his lips tightened into a straight line and he gave a half nod. In that brief moment I recognised a bond between us, both cast adrift on a sea of powerful emotions; yet bound by maleness to hold back our true feelings in front of strangers.

I held Penny’s hand as we walked away and several minutes went by before either of us spoke.

At last Penny broke the silence, ‘You knew didn’t you?’ she said. ‘About the pregnancy?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Craig told me yesterday. He asked me not to say.’ I felt a tear run down my cheek. ‘If only I’d got him to come to the pictures with us, or taken him for a walk, or to the pub, or  …  or anything. Just so he hadn’t gone out on that damn bike.’

She let go of my hand and slipped her arm around my waist. ‘Hey, don’t blame yourself, you weren’t to know. How could you?’

‘I don’t know. I just feel as though I should have done more, been more help, tried to understand what he was going through.’

‘You were a good friend, John. That’s all anyone can be.’

I nodded. ‘I should go and see his mum. Perhaps tomorrow … will you come?’

‘Of course,’ she said. She knew how to be a good friend too. 

When I got back home Mum had made sandwiches with the meat left over from lunchtime. I wasn’t hungry but she said I had to eat something, so I chewed and swallowed although the filling may as well have been cardboard.

There wasn’t a lot of other local news that Sunday and the radio reports of what had happened became more detailed as the day wore on into evening. I listened with a feeling of numb disbelief. There had been no witnesses to Craig’s accident. Residents of nearby houses had heard the bang but had not seen anything. Old Billy had been delivering his leaflets in the High Street at the time and thought he saw a grey or silver car speed by. But he wasn’t sure. The radio hadn’t yet learned of Craig’s death and still reported him as ‘critically ill’. I wasn’t interested in the rest of the news.

I thought about Billy; poor old sod could remember stuff from forty years ago clear as day, but couldn’t recall seeing a car the previous evening.

I thought about Deborah, carrying a now fatherless baby. Would she keep it? And if she did would it be like Craig?

Most of all I thought about Craig. All the good times we’d had together, how much I’d miss him. And what I was going to say to his mum in the morning. I felt empty and helpless.

Alan called round to the house at about 7:30 that evening. ‘I heard about Craig,’ he said. ‘I thought you might want to go out somewhere, talk?’

‘Thanks, Alan.’ I didn’t want to go out. I didn’t want to stay in either, so I collected my jacket and stepped out of the front door. Doing something, anything, seemed preferable to sitting staring at the walls. Alan had passed his driving test a few days before and had borrowed his mother’s brown Mini.

‘Do you fancy going for a wee drink?’ He asked as we drove away.

‘No. Oh shit! Sorry, I don’t know what I want right now.’

‘Aye.’ He nodded in slow motion. Driving down to the Coast Road he turned off the tarmac onto the Stray, bumped across the grass and parked facing the sea.

We sat in the car for a while, neither of us speaking; like pensioners on a day trip, but without the tartan rug and the Thermos. After a while we climbed from the Mini and made our way down to the sand, walking slowly, hands deep in pockets.

‘I never thanked you,’ said Alan.

‘For what?’

‘For not saying anything about  …  you know.’

‘Oh, that.’ To tell the truth I’d almost forgotten our conversation outside the gallery in Newcastle, when he’d confessed his big secret. ‘It was no big deal.’

‘Aye, well, thanks anyway. And if you need someone to talk to  …  Craig and yourself were good mates.’

‘Yeah, thanks.’ I picked up a pebble and threw it as hard as I could out to sea. ‘I’m visiting his mum tomorrow.’ The stone made a tiny splash against the wide expanse of the waves.

‘She’ll appreciate that.’

‘I just wish I knew what to say.’ There were tears in my eyes now. I wiped them on the sleeve of my denim jacket and Alan put an arm around my shoulders.

‘You’ll be okay. I could come with you, if you want.’

‘No, I’ll be fine. Penny’s going to come.’

‘That’s good, you need someone.’ He steered me back towards the car. ‘Come on, it’s getting late and I’ve never driven in the dark.’

‘You remember that last day of term, in fourth year, when they brought us down here to kill some time?’ I said as we strolled back.

‘Aye, we larked about, played football, built sandcastles.’

‘And Craig had his P.E. shorts on under his uniform, so he stripped off and went in the sea.’

‘And old Blakey got hopping mad and ordered him to “Get dressed at once, boy!”’

‘So the rest of us lads had to form a ring round him, whilst he took his wet shorts off, to stop the girls from seeing.’

‘If only he knew.’ Alan sounded wistful and for the first time since I’d heard the news of Craig’s death I managed a thin smile.

‘Even back then you knew you were  …?’ I asked as we walked back to the car.

‘If I’m honest I’ve always known. It isn’t something that happens overnight.’

He drove back and we stopped outside my house. As I opened the car door he placed a hand on my arm. ‘We can still be friends, John. Despite the gay thing.’

‘I know,’ I said and swallowed. I knew we could still be friends, and I knew it must have been hard for him to say the G-word. It was the first time I’d ever heard him use it. Then I did something I hadn’t done since I was a toddler, I leaned over and kissed another male on the cheek, it seemed the right thing to do. Before he could say anything more I climbed out of the car, slammed the door, and watched as the Mini drove away; listening to the whine of its gears as it climbed the hill; watching the tail lights recede into the twilight.

I turned to go indoors, as I did I saw Graham bending over the front of his Cortina. I waved but he didn’t see me. In any case I wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone else.