Free This Boy: A Memoir of a Childhood by Alan Johnson

introducing her to Tony’s mum, who was to become her closest friend.
    I don’t know how it happened, but one minute I was alone and palely loitering, reading a book in the big, damp bedroom I shared with Linda, the next I was careering around on the saddle of Tony’s blue bike, while he pedalled furiously, poised above the crossbar. It was a lovely bike: streamlined, modern, with a sparkle in its metallic blue paint.
    One evening, Tony showed me a second bike he’d acquired from somewhere and challenged me to a race. The start was to be outside his home in Lancaster Road, following a circuit left into Brandon Road, left by Latimer Road Underground station and into Bramley Road, and then first left back into Lancaster Road, where Tony’s neighbour, short, tubby Walter Curtis, would be waiting to declare the winner. What Tony’s spare bike lacked in sophistication it made up for in size and I was not a proficient cyclist. He offered to give me an advantage by lending me his and taking the other one himself.
    With the help of the state-of-the-art blue bike, glitteringfaintly in the early-autumn dusk, I kept pace with Tony as we came to the final bend. But then disaster struck. I was going so fast that it was impossible to keep on track round the sharp corner of Bramley Road and Lancaster Road. I veered straight across the road and collided with a young woman who was just coming out of the little grocery store almost opposite the Coxes’ house, carrying a pint of milk. Her leg was wounded, my front tooth was broken and the milk bottle was smashed to smithereens.
    Such was the furore that Tony was dispatched to my house, ten minutes away, to fetch Lily, who arrived on the scene as I was being nursed by Tony’s mother. I don’t think the young woman I’d hit was too badly injured, though I can still remember her tender words of comfort: ‘You fucking little idiot, why don’t you learn to ride that fucking bike?’ Strong words but well deserved. That ‘fucking bike’ needed a bit of attention after I’d finished with it. I was still in shock when Lily arrived – lapsing into Scouse as she scolded me only marginally less aggressively than my young victim. While Lily’s tirade featured no swear words (we never heard Lily swear), it was equally bruising in its condemnation.
    It was this incident that brought Pat Cox and Lily together. They discovered they had a lot in common. Two tiny, cheerful, funny women – Pat with her delicate, birdlike features and gold-rimmed glasses; Lily still petite and pretty before her heart medication made her put on weight – they had similar backgrounds, both worked every hour God sent and both cared deeply about their children’s future. Like Lily, Pat was not a Londoner. She had come from her home in Nottingham during the war to work for the NAAFI, like Lily. She was even tinierthan Lily but possessed the strength and energy of a person three times her size. The cups of tea they shared that afternoon became the first of many over the years, always in Pat’s home because Lily was so ashamed of the conditions we lived in.
    While they were alike in so many ways, they differed, of course, in one important facet of their lives: their marriages. At the end of every day – every single day – Albert and Pat Cox would sit together on their big, comfy settee. Albert would put his feet up on the small table in front of the paraffin heater; Pat would tuck her legs beneath her and lay her head on his chest, and he’d put his arm around her. In front of them would be two glasses of whisky. They separated only for Albert to roll an Old Holborn and Pat to light one of her small filter tips, or to take a sip of Bell’s. Then they’d snuggle up together again. It mattered not who was in the room with them, they would sit like a courting couple, listening to the radio or, in later years, watching TV, uninhibited in their devotion to one another. Despite my tender age, the significance of this