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on, you. I never had money and I never had looks and I never missed either. I never saw the one bring joy or the other last.’
    â€˜But you worry about that pair and not yourself? Couldn’t you come to a bit of harm as well, or is The Man Upstairs looking after you?’
    â€˜I’ll be all right. If you’ve done time in Idi Amin’s Uganda, Paddington isn’t so bad. And maybe I am being looked after by The One Upstairs, and if so, I think She’s doing a good job.’
    At that moment the front door crashed open and a drunk staggered into the hall. Jimmy was up and had him face hard against the wall with an arm twisted up behind his back before Philomena had moved.
    â€˜Easy Jimmy, easy. It’s only Freddo.’
    Jimmy moved back slightly and Freddo promptly vomited.
    â€˜Oh, God, sit him outside, then come in and clear that up will you? Some of our best nights started quiet.’
    Jimmy took Freddo outside and sat him on the floor in the alley with his back resting against the wall. He was in no state to worry about the cold. Jimmy poked him hard in the leg. ‘Don’t come in again till you’re fit.’
    Freddo nodded without looking up, rolled sideways, and went to sleep. Jimmy went back inside, closed the front door, and headed to the store room. This job meant cleaning one of the buckets and mops he had left there. He pulled on a pair of bright yellow Marigold gloves and, as he tried to clean the shit out of the mop head under the running tap, pondered on how Philomena took it all in her stride and never seemed to sit in judgement on the trash she dealt with. Maybe she was genuinely good, holy even.
    As Jimmy put the mop down and reached for the Jeyes Fluid it was not the odour of sanctity that he felt was clinging to him. This was his third week as general odd job man and ‘security’ at Bart’s. It was not what he had been used to but the work was easy. Some of the clients might be violent but never in any professional way, so they presented no real problem. He rinsed out the sink and poured some of the whitish fluid into it. Not hard work, but no one could say it was pleasant.
    He put the mop into the bucket, half filled it with water, and hoped they and he smelled more of Jeyes Fluid than anything else, then set off back to his next little assignment. He looked at the floor as he came back to the hallway. Someone had walked straight through the vomit and trailed it into the dining room.
    â€˜What the hell am I doing here?’ he said to himself. But he knew exactly what he was doing here. Exactly.
    Kilburn, June 1956
    The group of three girls ran to where Jimmy was standing in the playground. They formed a line in front of him and chanted:
    â€˜Jimmy Costello, he can’t dance,
    Because he’s got no underpants.
    Jimmy Costello, he can’t sing,
    Because he hasn’t got a thing.’
    The last word was almost shouted so there could be no doubt what the ‘thing’ he didn’t have was. Having finished their performance, they giggled and ran off to another part of the playground to annoy some other boy.
    Jimmy was eleven and in his last year of primary school. Next term he would go to the secondary modern. Hardly anyone from his school ever passed the eleven-plus exam, at least, not often. This year Terry Prosser had been the only one, the first in a long time.
    Another boy came out of the mass of noisy children and stood beside him.
    â€˜What you doing, Jimmy?’
    It was Kevin. Kevin was a thief. That wasn’t so bad though, because everyone knew Kevin was a thief so no one gave him a chance to steal anything. Jimmy disliked Kevin, not because he was a thief but because he was stupid. He was always trying to show off but had nothing to show off about. He loved to swear and show how bad his language could be but he had no imagination so he simply parroted the strings of obscenities which everyone knew, even if they