There was a noisy bleeping. Peter reached past me to punch a code into a control box set in an open cupboard in the porch. “He gave me the code,” he said. “The burglar alarm. In case of false alarms, you know. That’s how I was able to turn it off, when I broke the window to get in. In case you were wondering how … I was a key holder. But he had a deadbolt and a chain, which was why I had to break the window—”

“It’s okay, Peter,” I said, a little impatient. Shut up. He never had known when to do that.

He subsided.

I took a breath and stepped into the house.

* * *

Here it all was, my childhood home, just as it had always been.

In the hall, a hat stand laden with musty coats, a telephone table with a seventies-era handset and a heap of scribbled names, numbers, and notes piled up in a cardboard box, notes in Dad’s handwriting. In an alcove Dad had carved out of the wall, a small, delicate statue of the Virgin Mary. Downstairs, the dining room with the scarred old table, the small kitchen with greasy-looking stove and Formica-topped table, the living room with bookshelves, battered sofa and armchairs, and a surprisingly new TV system, complete with VCR and DVD. The narrow staircase — exactly fifteen stairs, just as I’d counted as a child — up to the landing, where there was a bathroom, the master bedroom and three small rooms, and the little hatchway to the attic. The wallpaper was plain, but it didn’t look as shabby as I’d expected, or feared. So Dad must have decorated since I’d last visited, five or six years ago — or had it done, perhaps by Peter, who stood on the doormat behind me, a great lumpen presence. I didn’t want to ask him.

It all felt small, so damn small. I had a fantasy that I was a giant like Gulliver, trapped in the house, with my arms stuck in the living room and kitchen, my legs pinned in the bedrooms.

Peter was looking at the Virgin. “Still a Catholic household. Father Moore would be proud.” The parish priest, kindly but formidable, when we were both kids; he had given us our First Communions. “Do you practice?”