“Do you want to go for a drive, Alfie?” Sangeeta asked outside Mr. Landreth’s office.

I had grown to quite like Sangeeta. She would talk straightforwardly about Mam, and encourage me to do the same. She no longer hushed her voice, or put her head on one side in a “poor little boy” sort of way; that always made me feel worse.

We drove in her car, making small talk: How was my arm? (Almost better, thank you.) How was Earl Grey House? (OK, but I did not like the food much.)

The roads were more or less empty. It had rained a little at dawn: a quick, violent shower that had come and gone in half an hour, and the thirsty earth had sucked up the water like a dry sponge until only a few puddles remained in the shade. The sun would dry them out soon.

We drove to Tynemouth. Sangeeta had promised to buy fish and chips. I knew something was up, something bigger than the controversy about the book. Obviously. You do not get taken out of school for lunch normally.

We ate our fish and chips from the packet, sitting side by side on the large stone plinth at the base of the monument to Lord Collingwood. The tide was out, exposing flat brown rocks, small pools, and seaweed in the small bay below us.

Sangeeta looked up at the cloudless sky and tutted. “We need rain,” she murmured. I knew a tricky question was to follow. I had noticed this in Sangeeta: she preceded difficult discussions with a remark on the weather, like she was warming up.

Sure enough: “Alfie?”

“Mmm?” I said, through a mouthful of cod.

“You know that I’ve tried to be straight with you, ever since I met you, don’t you?”

I did not like the sound of where this was going.

She continued: “Only, I don’t think you’re telling me everything you know.”

I looked at her, furrowing my brow to express puzzlement, or interest, while secretly thinking, Sangeeta, if I did tell you everything I know, you would not believe me anyway.

“The thing is, Alfie, we’ve been asking around. We believe you do have family. I mean—I understand you and your mam led pretty private lives, and that’s nothing to be ashamed of. But there are people who talk of boys just like you living in your house, with your mam, before you were even born.”

“What people?”

“Come on, Alfie. Nobody lives their lives completely cut off from other members of society. The vicar of St. Mary’s on Ilfracombe Gardens, for a start. He was at your mam’s funeral? He says that when he moved here twenty years ago, he visited your mam, and there was a young lad of about your age living there. Is this a cousin or something? Or an older brother?”

I said nothing, and ate some more chips.

“Come on, Alfie. Don’t go all silent on me.”

I stayed silent.

“We’ve looked at local records, Alfie. We can do that, you know. Council tax, the census, the electoral roll. There’ve been members of your family living there for years and years. You’re even in the phone book. Monk, H., Oak Cottage, Whitley Bay. That was back in the 1950s. Who was that—your grandmother? Great-grandmother? Where is the rest of this family, Alfie? Why all the secrecy? You have to help us here.”

She took out her cell phone and tapped it a few times until a photograph appeared. I had to struggle not to gasp. It was the one Aidan had told me about from the Shields Gazette. Mam and I stood in front of Oak Cottage, me clutching Biffa and grinning.

As I stared, Sangeeta said gently, “Who are these people, Alfie? He looks so like you, doesn’t he? Look—the dark glasses, the erm…gappy smile. He even had a cat! Didn’t you say you lost your cat?”

“I am sorry, Sangeeta. I do not know.”

Sangeeta clicked the telephone off and put it away.

“And I’m sorry too, Alfie. I don’t believe you.” Her voice had acquired a harder edge. We were both quiet for a moment. Below us, on the wet sand, a collie chased a stick into the sea, and a seagull screeched.

“Alfie. Talk to me!”

I said nothing.

“I have another theory, Alfie. I wonder if, in fact, you’re much older than you say.”

I stared out to sea, and swallowed hard.