When Leander walked past Citroen Sid’s house coming home, he noticed something strange. The front door was open, but Sid wasn’t anywhere to be seen. The detail that made it weird was the type of open the door was; it wasn’t cracked or ajar. It was all the way open. In the years Leander had been living on Poppy Drive, Sid never left the door open. Overpowered by curiosity, Leander tightened his grip on Rosco’s leash and crept a little closer to Sid’s house. He could see right through the living room in the front to the kitchen in the back. There was no movement, only the flickering of Citroen Sid’s kitchen light and his cemetery of cars. Leander gulped.

Sneaking closer – treading the ground underneath him from the back of his heel to the tip of his toe – Leander craned his neck to see more. Still there was no one. The carpet in the living room was thick and dark. It looked brown – though it could have been red – but it was hard to tell as all the curtains were pulled shut. The sofa was against the far wall, but all its cushions were on the floor by a tall, ominous bookcase. Nothing matched. Leander tied Rosco to the fence post and drew in a deep breath. It didn’t look like Sid was home. If he went inside, he’d be known at school as the boy who went into Citroen Sid’s house. He’d have the inside scoop. He might even be popular. Maybe Robbie Bakerfield would stop stealing his pocket money and want to be friends instead. The compulsion to go inside became too strong. As Marco and Rodney would say in their cartoon, buckle up and [CENSORED] it.

Leander stood in Citroen Sid’s doorway, his eyes adjusting to his surroundings. As he stepped inside, he was immediately hit with a smell he couldn’t identify. It was like old bananas, but burned; similar to custard, but with a sour note. It resembled the warm milk that Leander liked before bed, but if it was microwaved in a plastic cup that melted a little into the milk. Leander had no idea where it was coming from, but the whole house reeked of it. Everything was covered in dust and it was clear that nothing had been disturbed in years. In the corner, there was a big square radio with huge black CDs. Leander had never seen anything like it. He sat down cross-legged in front of a 48 large box full of the CDs and began to flick through them. As the f irst one fell forward, it shot dust out into his face and Leander coughed. Pulling his school shirt up over his nose, he browsed the rest of them. They were all names he’d never heard before: Fats Domino, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington… They looked old anyway and, as Leander’s schoolmates made him blatantly aware, nothing old was good. New was undoubtedly always better. Maybe that’s why trees dropped their old branches; they were just making room for better ones.

Suddenly, the door behind him closed. Leander shot up off the floor. He spun around. Citroen Sid towered above him, palm spread flat against the front door.

“A visitor,” Sid said.

The rest of the meal went on in a similar way, Leonard and Anita sharing food and smiles, Andrew and Rose swapping ferocity and scowls, and Rory daydreaming to himself between mouthfuls. After it was over, Andrew and Rose gave him a lift back to his house as Leonard and Anita had been the ones to pick him up.

“Slow down, Andy,” Rose said.

“Don’t you start, woman,” Andrew sighed.

“You’re tearing down this road like Evel sodding Kneivel.”

“I’m going the speed limit.”

“The speed limit of what? The Autobahn?”

Then, from the back seat, Rory caught Andrew’s lips twitch and his hard eyes soften in the rear view mirror.

“You make me mad, Rose. Absolutely hopping.”

“You love it.”

“I bloody well do not,” he said, but he took one of his hands off the wheel long enough to stroke her leg. She covered his with one of hers, her jewellery rattling in the dark car.

They began arguing again not even thirty seconds later until they reached Rory’s house. He thanked them both for the lift and the good evening. If Simone were here, coming home would be the best part of any night. As it stood now, it was the worst.

Rory thought of his hands around her waist like he did every time he put the key in the lock. In the seconds between inserting the key and opening the door, he relived the hours of their first night together. All the fumbling, the giggling because they both had too much scotch at the Christmas party, her in that blue dress, blue like the sea at midnight, blue like the festive lights he strung up around the door, blue like all the dreams he thought could never become real… She sighed after he kissed her on the front steps, not that same sigh people usually gave him, but one of longing. A sigh to stop time.

They didn’t go inside straight away. When the kiss they shared was over, he reached for her hands that were as frozen as the winter night and held them to his chest. Then he lowered his arms and put them around her, pulled her whole body to his as if to make them one person.

Alone, he opened the door and went inside, flipping the light switch on the wall next to him as he locked up. As he made his way to the kitchen to wash his Elvis mug, he edged his way around the stacks of magazines that stood like pillars in the middle of his front room. Every copy of Fisherman’s World since 1968.