The following day Penny and I went to see Craig’s mum. We walked as slowly as we could, as though getting there later would somehow lessen the pain. The curtains at the house in Chapel Terrace were half closed which made it look smaller as we approached. Angela admitted us with a polite nod, then we sat in the lounge, not daring to look comfortable, and drank tea. I felt I’d drunk more tea in the short time since Craig’s death than in the entire rest of my life. It seemed the English felt compelled to reach for the kettle to combat emotional crisis.

Mrs Stebbins thanked me for what I’d done, and I felt a fraud because I didn’t think I’d done anything. We discussed Craig and what he’d meant to us. It seemed so strange, sitting in this house, where I’d sat so often before talking to Craig, now forced to talk about him, knowing he was gone. His mum asked if I’d like something to remember him by, but I couldn’t face going through his stuff. Couldn’t face that room, with its MFI wardrobe, the Pink Floyd posters, and the dusty Airfix Spitfire suspended by threads from the ceiling.

‘Have you heard from Deborah?’ I asked.

‘She phoned,’ Craig’s mum said. ‘She sounded very upset.’

I nodded and stole a glance at Penny. ‘We saw her yesterday. She took it pretty hard.’

‘Such a nice girl.’ The conversation paused as Mrs Stebbins sipped at her tea. Then she asked if, as Craig’s friend, I’d say a few words at the funeral. Tears stung my eyes again. I so much wanted to say no, but I couldn’t bring myself to refuse, and mumbled, ‘Yes, of course.’

‘It looks like it’s going to be Thursday,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘I’ll let you know the time.’ I marvelled that she could be so calm, as though she was arranging a coffee morning or a fête. Then I looked again at her puffy eyes and knew that it was all just a front.

On the doorstep as we were leaving she took Penny aside. ‘Look after him, love. You’ve got a good one there.’

‘I know,’ said Penny, patting Mrs Stebbins’ hand. ‘I know.’

We walked back onto the estate.

‘Deborah hasn’t told them,’ said Penny.

‘It might be better that way,’ I replied, ‘for now at least.’

‘I might go and see her again.’

‘Want me to come?’

She bit her lip. ‘No, girl to girl, I think. You’d only get in the way.’  She squeezed my hand. ‘But thanks for asking, John.’

Halfway home, I saw Graham slouching towards us. ‘Not often we see you on foot,’ I said, trying to sound normal.

‘Car’s off the road,’ he mumbled in reply.

‘I hope it’s not serious.’

‘Some idiot ran into her in a car park.’

I realised he must have been inspecting the results when I’d seen him the previous evening. ‘Oh, much damage?’

‘No, but I don’t want to drive her until she’s fixed.’

‘I’d have thought the odd battle scar would add to the punk image.’ I realised, with a twinge of sadness, that Craig would have enjoyed that remark.

Graham, on the other hand, didn’t seem impressed. ‘Huh.’ He changed the subject, ‘Did you know that kid who was killed?’

‘Yes.’ I swallowed hard, fighting back the urge to sob at this casual reference to Craig as, ‘that kid who was killed’. ‘He was my mate. We’ve just been to see his mum.’

‘Tough deal.’ He shuffled his feet. ‘They got any idea who did it?’

‘No, there were no witnesses, only Billy.’

‘Useless old tosser.’

I thought this comment unnecessarily cruel. I felt Penny tug at my hand. ‘We’d better be going,’ I said.

‘Yeah, see you around.’ Graham shuffled on his way.

‘He seemed a bit odd,’ Penny said when he was out of earshot.

‘Graham? He’s always been odd.’

‘No, I mean about Craig.’

‘He didn’t really know him.’

‘But he seemed kind of, I don’t know, guilty.’

‘Nah. It’s only Graham being weird.’ We had stopped on Lancaster Drive.

‘Do you want me to come back with you?’ she said, taking my hand.

‘No, thanks, I need some time on my own. Work out what I’m going to say.’

‘All right, you know where I am if  …  you know.’

I nodded, we kissed, brief and passionless, and I wandered home. When I got there I started to write about Craig, agonising over the right words, the right tone, reading the results aloud to Sandy to make sure.

On Tuesday, the clock radio woke me to Queen’s ‘You’re My Best Friend’ and for a while I cried silent tears into my pillow. As the tears stopped I began to realise that, more than anything, I was angry.

Angry with myself for being alive when Craig was dead.

Angry with the driver of the car, angry with the doctors, the police, Deborah, God, bicycle manufacturers, tea growers  …  Fuck! I was angry with the whole world. I rolled over and punched the snooze button.

My nana would have told me to count my blessings, only at that moment I didn’t feel as though I had any. If I lived to a reasonable old age I could see about sixty more years of heartache and disappointment stretching ahead of me. At 365 days a year  …  mental arithmetic was never my strong point and I rounded the figures down to make calculation easier. More than 18,000 days wallowing in self-pity. Ending up a sad, dribbling incontinent in some nursing home that stank of urine and boiled cabbage. For the first time in my seventeen years, the idea of being dead briefly appealed to me.

Then I remembered that Deborah’s caravan smelled of cabbage. My emotional switchback began the slow climb from self-pity back up to anger. Anger at cabbage growers, caravanners, Billy, the local radio station  …  I drifted back to sleep.

When I woke up again it was with a huge sense of emptiness and a powerful erection. Trying hard to ignore both, I pulled the speech notes I’d written the day before from the bedside cabinet and read them over. Then I tore them up.

‘Are you all right, love?’ my mum said, when I at last made it down to the kitchen.

‘No,’ I said.

She placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘I know it’s hard. You should write that speech though, I’m sure it’ll help.’ I wasn’t so certain.

I toyed with a bowl of cereal for a while but only ate about half of it, then I spent what was left of the morning moping around the house. Turning on the radio, The Real Thing sang ‘You to Me are Everything’. I turned it off.

After lunch I went and lay on my bed with a pad and pen and stared at the blank page. I’d always enjoyed writing but now the only words that came into my head were the ones I’d already rejected as being trite, or corny, or stupid. Mum came up with a cup of tea and I let it go cold on the bedside cabinet. I could hear her moving around downstairs, talking to someone on the phone, though I couldn’t make out the conversation.

A while later there was a knock on the front door, followed by light footsteps on the stairs, and a gentle tap at my bedroom door.

‘Are you decent?’ It was Penny’s voice.

‘Yes.’

‘Pity.’ She came in the room and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘I was hoping to catch you in mid wank.’

I drew back my lips, but it wasn’t a proper smile. Me, ever the perpetual joker but, right now, nothing seemed funny anymore.

‘How’s it going?’ she asked. I showed her the blank paper. ‘That good, huh? Come on, let’s go for a walk.’

I tried to protest, but she insisted. I found my shoes and we made our way downstairs. Stepping out of the front door, I caught Penny and Mum exchange significant glances.

‘I saw Deborah again,’ Penny said, taking my hand as we walked.

‘Is she okay?’

‘Still pretty upset.’

‘She must be,’ I said, nodding. ‘What about  …  the other thing?’ I couldn’t bring myself to say pregnancy.

‘She’s decided to keep it quiet, at least until after the funeral. Her parents are trying to persuade her to have an abortion.’

‘Do you think she will?’

‘I don’t know, she’s really mixed up right now.’

As always we were drawn down the High Street towards the sea. The tide was high and the beach was nothing but a narrow strip of sand, so we walked along the Stray. We were still in August but there seemed to be a hint of autumn in the breeze. We sat on the grass and watched the waves queuing up for their lemming-like dash to the shore. Out in the bay, the tankers and container ships waited their turn to enter the Tees. For a while neither of us spoke.

‘It’s tough, isn’t it?’ Penny broke the silence. ‘My granddad died when I was twelve. You keep thinking they’re still there. That you’ll turn a corner and bump into them.’

I nodded slowly. ‘Did you get over it?’

She thought about this for what seemed like a long time. ‘Not altogether. Sometimes I catch myself dreaming he’s still alive.’ A seagull wheeled screeching overhead in search of tourist picnics. ‘Or I’ll see something on TV, or read a passage in a book and think “Granddad would like that”.’

‘Everywhere I look, everywhere I go, it  …  it just reminds me of Craig.’

‘In a way that’s good. You need to remember the happy times.’ She placed an arm round my shoulders. ‘Remember that last day of term, in fourth year?’

I managed a small laugh. ‘You remember that too? I was only talking to Alan about it on Sunday night.’

‘That was so funny, all you boys in a circle and the girls all craning their necks to get a flash.’

‘I used to think it was only boys who had dirty minds.’

‘Don’t you believe it: you should see the graffiti in the Ladies’ loos.’

Another memory entered my head prompted by this recollection; of Craig and me skinny dipping just a few short weeks ago. I was about to share it with Penny, then I decided that this would be my private memory of Craig in happier times; something that only I knew. It would be my personal treasure.

Then I had an idea. It drifted into my thoughts like a single, perfectly formed snowflake. ‘Come on,’ I said, jumping to my feet. ‘Let’s get back.’

‘Why the hurry?’

‘I know what I need to do.’

‘About what?’

‘The speech, for Craig. I have to conjure up the good times.’

Back home, on my bed, I couldn’t write fast enough, the words rushed headlong onto the paper, like the waves crashing onto the beach. My mum nagged me for letting another cup of tea go cold.

Wednesday started as a pretty ordinary day. My mum began complaining that I was under her feet, so I took the dog for a long walk. I needed to get out of the house and gain some time on my own.

Foregoing the beach, for once, we went up to the top of the estate, to the level crossing, and along the cinder path by the railway. This was always a slow walk; with lots of interesting smells for Sandy to investigate, and in an adjacent field, a herd of cows that he liked to watch.

Past the station, you looked down onto what had been the old coal yard, which was now occupied by a vehicle-dismantling business. Old cars, mangled and rusting, were stacked four deep around the sides; a shabby corrugated-iron building stood next to the disused weighbridge.

Waiting for Sandy to snuffle around in the undergrowth, I looked down into the yard. I had a sort of game I played in my head; identifying the make and model of a vehicle from its crumpled or stacked remains. Most of the wrecks dated from the 1960s and I had grown up with the commonplace shapes; their associated names – Anglia, Oxford, Vanguard – came to mind without effort.

As I watched, a man in a greasy blue boiler suit emerged from the shed. Behind him came a familiar spiked head. Graham. He was the only one in the village to have embraced punk and his distinctive coiffure made him something of a local landmark. ‘Straight down the High Street and turn left at the punk rocker,’ villagers would direct tourists.

The boiler-suited man had crossed to the other side of the yard out of my view, Graham waited in his customary attitudinal slouch, hands thrust into trouser pockets. The man returned carrying a wing and grille from a Mk II Cortina. Looked like Graham would be doing his own repairs.

I dragged the reluctant dog out of the bushes, made my way home and rehearsed my speech, yet again.

I’d never been to a funeral before. I wore my dark blue ‘weddings and interviews’ suit with my best white shirt, and Dad loaned me an unfashionable narrow black tie, which I think had once been part of his RAF uniform.

The church was almost full that Thursday. The pews packed with family, friends from the village, students and staff from the college. I heard Craig’s voice in my head say, ‘I never knew I was so popular.’

I spotted Deborah, sobbing into a handkerchief, on the opposite side of the aisle. Bright sunlight streamed through the stained glass windows into the cool interior and picked out dust particles dancing in the air. I sat on the end of the second pew, next to Penny, the hard wooden back pressing into my shoulders; breathing that Church of England smell of candles, old books and wax polish; listening to the quiet mumble of people who didn’t know what to say. When the coffin came in, topped by a simple arrangement of red carnations, I marvelled that it seemed too small to contain Craig’s personality.

‘I am the resurrection and the life  …’ began the vicar. He had once given us a talk at school about his wartime experiences, as a prisoner of the Japanese on the Burma railway. He had held the class spellbound on that occasion and now his delivery of the funeral service seemed to echo with years of suffering. 

The first hymn was ‘The King of Love my Shepherd Is’. By the end of the first verse I couldn’t form the words and tears were rolling down my cheeks. Penny handed me a tissue, I concentrated on my breathing and tried to blot out everything around me.

I’d composed myself by the time I had to speak. Standing at the front of the Church I looked at Craig’s mum in the first row, she met my eyes and gave me a thin smile. I took a deep breath. ‘We are all here today because in some way Craig touched our lives. As a member of the family, a friend, a fellow student or a pupil  … ’

I had made notes on postcards but I knew it off by heart. I told them about our friendship, about burning down the shed, and about some of the other adventures we’d shared.

When I’d finished, my eyes were filled with tears once more and I struggled to see as I walked back to the pew. A low murmur of appreciation ran through the congregation. Penny squeezed my arm and whispered, ‘You were brilliant.’ I wiped my eyes again and concentrated on the reality of the hard wood at my back. The rest of the service passed in a blur as my grief was replaced by anger once more and I fought down the urge to run, screaming, out into the street.

Following the church service we drove in convoy to the crematorium. The journey involved a stretch of dual carriageway where we encountered a girl in the first stages of learning to drive. She was travelling at such a slow and hesitant pace that the funeral cortège had to pull out and overtake. I saw her pale, determined face as we passed and my heart went out to her. I knew that Craig would have thought this to be a great joke and that we would have shared some tasteless gag about ton-up funerals. I smiled to myself at the thought.

At the crem we had to wait in a wood-panelled, blue-carpeted, sparsely-furnished ante-room whilst the previous service completed.

When the door to the chapel opened to release the mourners we heard the taped voice of Vera Lynn singing ‘We’ll Meet Again’.

Craig’s uncle muttered, ‘Go on, Vera.’ As she strained for the top note of ‘some sunny day’ and one or two of us suppressed a giggle.

We were ushered in to the more sedate tones of ‘Lead us Heavenly Father’.

After the committal we returned to the village, where a buffet had been laid on in the church hall. One of those very English post-funeral events: everyone uncomfortable in unfamiliar clothes, eating small pork pies, curling ham sandwiches and unidentifiable vol-au-vents. Snatches of polite conversation drifted around the room.

‘Lovely service.’

‘Very sad.’

‘Whole life ahead of him.’

‘Such a shame.’

Simon, the curate, came up to me. ‘That was a very moving speech, John. Really captured Craig’s personality. Don’t you think?’

‘Thank you,’ I said, snapping back from my eavesdropping. ‘He was a good friend, I tried to show that.’

‘You did well. Perhaps you should consider taking up writing? You seem to have a flair for it?’

‘I’m not that good.’ I looked down at my unaccustomed shiny toe caps and willed him to go away.

‘Don’t put yourself down. I know it’s a difficult time now, but think about it, yes?’ He patted my arm and went off to circulate among the other mourners. I looked around for Penny and spotted her talking to my mum in the far corner. She wore the same black dress she had for the party and I was for a brief moment reminded of brighter times. I wandered over.

‘Well done,’ said Mum, ‘I’m so proud of you.’

‘Everyone says you made a great speech,’ added Penny.

‘I know,’ I said, ‘I only wish I hadn’t had to do it.’ I felt a hand on my arm and turned to see Mrs Stebbins, her eyes red-ringed from crying.

‘Thank you, John.’ She gave me her thin smile again. ‘Any time you want to come round, you know you’re always welcome.’ She turned to Penny. ‘You too, love.’

We neither of us could find appropriate words so all we could do was smile in reply and squeeze her hand.