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‘Something’ was now being sax-murdered.
    â€œDor!”
    William Stone – an ex-neighbour – had taken Cook’s place by the play table. They had first become acquainted back when Gina was pregnant and taking an afternoon nap. Stone had shooed away a gaggle of noisy estate kids, after Cook had failed to persuade them to ‘make a bit less noise’. They had smelt his fear, and he felt emasculated and hopelessly middle-class in the face of their reptilian contempt. In contrast, Stone – a short but stocky police officer – succeeded in convincing the kids that there were better things to do than vandalise a mound of abandoned builder’s tools. They had slouched away, lobbing a few profanities over their pointy shoulders. Cook was grateful, but had the impression that Stone was trading on reputation rather than status.
    â€œHey, Will. How are you?”
    Cook swaggered over, unconvincingly. He sat down – with care – next to Stone, wisely resisting the urge to slap him on his burly back.
    â€œI’m alright, mate, yeah! What’s the story here, then? Having the snip or something?”
    â€œHa. No! I’ve, er…” Cook winced and switched his weight from right to left buttock.
    â€œOh, I see…” said Stone, whispering. “Arse boil?”
    â€œSort of.”
    Stone considered this as he fiddled with the gummed-up wheels of a wooden toy train. “Fucking hell! Bum-grapes?”
    Cook nodded. Stone leaned in close. It was early morning, but Cook could smell alcohol on his breath. “You know why, don’t ya? Because you talk so much shit!”
    Stone bellowed with laughter. Cook politely guffawed, despite seeing no sense in the remark.
    â€œWell,” he offered, “that’s my job.”
    Stone smiled at that.
    â€œI’m having a cholesterol check, mate. Weight’s all over the fucking place!”
    A white-haired old woman sitting opposite tutted and sent over a sharp look. Cook was suddenly keen to get away and so employed his standard method of bringing a chance encounter to a premature close.
    â€œListen. We should have a catch-up sometime.”
    Lately, Cook seemed to be in a permanent state of ‘catch-up’. He could feel his grip loosening on the matters of culture he would have obsessively monitored only a couple of years ago. He was still prone to faintly teenage fixations with certain music, adrenalised hectoring on pop-culture issues, and even the odd cautious engagement with sport and politics. But he was befuddled by science, bored with art and borderline anhedonic over nature. He drank more from habit than for effect and, despite his name, had little interest in anything but basic food. His sense of the sheer absurdity of sex was now so developed that he could barely do it without sniggering and, while he used to set aside time for lengthy sessions of masturbation, he had gradually adopted the swift and functional approach – more soporific than pornographic. For Cook, the sensual world was another country. They did things differently there.
    â€œYeah,” said Stone, “let’s have a pint. I’m on nights this week but I’ll text you. Maybe next Thursday?”
    Cook agreed. Like the other aspects of his life, he was long overdue an update on Stone’s typically colourful emotional wranglings.
    On the way out, he opened his calendar app and checked next week’s schedule. On Thursday, he was due to attend a screening of
Struisvogel
, a post-war Austrian political thriller about a young woman’s attempt to track down her father, an ex-concentration-camp guard, also wanted by Nazi hunters. Cook mulled the inevitably 120-minute-plus meditation on Holocaust guilt and father-daughter redemption. He deleted the screening entry and tapped out a replacement – ‘Drinks with Will’.

6. Mum & Dad

    January, 1974
    Cook burrowed through the darkness –