I grew up round the corner from here. You could follow me out of the back gate, closing it behind us and reaching over the top to fit the hook into its little hoop. We'd go along this little path, here, through a gap into a row of garages. We used to call the little gap a 'snicket', a wonderful word for these tiny passages connecting two parallel streets; in some parts of England they call them ginnels. Sometimes, they feel like secret roads, known only to the locals. They're excellent for walking the dog, and great for a midnight fumble on the way back from the pub.

But look, come round here - past the garages, taking time to check the grafitti scraped into the dusty doors - nothing too permanent round here, just a finger and perhaps a little spit. We can find out who loves whom, or muse on the perpetual message 'russ noble wants this garage', which someone keeps taking the trouble to re-write whenever the rains wash it away. There is no Russ Noble that I know of, but it seems to keep someone more-or-less out of mischief.

The house in question is that one. It's dusty and broken now, all empty, though there's rumours some property developer wants to do something with it. We moved out of there when I was thirteen. I hated being thirteen, and moving didn't help one bit, even if it was just around the corner. My brothers and I carried armfuls of badly-packed possessions along the route we've just covered; my parents weren't rich enough to afford a removal van, and the spare cash from downgrading the house was destined to pay off my father's business debts. A kind of fresh start, I realise now. I didn't understand it at the time, and I certainly didn't help. 'I don't think money's that important,' I sniped during one argument, hurling it back over my shoulder down the stairs. No stairs in the new house; we were all on one floor there.

I think back, to my mother, her life in both the old house and in the new. Three times a week, sheets would flap and crack on the thin ropes strung between the trees and the house; proper washing lines, built to withstand all but a hurricane, as long as the pegs held out. I used to live here with her, until I moved away to college. Time intervened and trickled slowly past. I met my beloved, and nearly got married. Meanwhile, my father inexpertly played the field, and died not long after they divorced. She wanted to come and live with my beloved and I, but we selfishly said no. Slowly, her mind crumbled, mirroring her slow descent into old age. And then, one day she simply disappeared, as people do when age overtakes them. Her clocks stopped ticking when she left, I made sure of that, for after we returned from the nursing home I simply left them to wind down, let the batteries run out.

The house stood derelict from that time, though when my beloved and I decided to move in only two years later, the washing lines still hung in the garden. I live alone, now, since last week. The other day, I did two things for the first time since I left home as a boy; I hung washing in the garden, and as I pegged my damp clothes out in neat and regimented lines, I cried pointless tears for myself, for my mother, and for my pointless life.

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