REGENERATION

It began when she answered the phone, gave me the handset and said, ‘it’s your mother,’ who I then agreed to meet in the park.
Stood where I said I’d be when I saw an old friend push a pushchair after a young child running across the grassy ridge in front of me. He looked like he did when I first knew him and we lived together at the Grove, North End.
I called his name, he turned, faced me and I went over, on my way, blanking my mother who came from the West.
‘What you doing here?’ I said. ‘I’ve not seen you a while.’
‘I phoned about ten years ago,’ he said, ‘there was a woman’s voice in the background. Who was that?’
‘A woman I finished with round about then.’
‘What you been up to since?’
‘Come up to the flat and I’ll show you.’

When we got there he said, ‘I’ve got two boys. The oldest is sixteen, the youngest, nine.’
‘Are you still with the same woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘Must be twenty years?’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘You must really love her.’
He laughed. ‘Well, I love her.’
‘Yes, ok, I should know better, doing what I do.’

I looked through the kitchen window out over the city. My friend looked at the wall behind me.
‘See the light?’ I said. ‘See how it shines off the wet sides of the buildings like an old sepia photograph with gold highlights?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
We went to the balcony and by the time we got there the scene had changed with the centre piece, in the distance, a long red-brick building gutted by fire, smoke still drifting up from the burnt out shell.
‘What happened there?’ asked my friend.
‘Regeneration,’ I said.