“Well,” says Nelson. I haven’t seen him for a few years. He’s waiting for me in the Chinese restaurant, patiently turning over the menu. With your schoolfriends, you tend to think of them as they were, and it was unnatural to find Nelson there, not just on time, but early.
Nelson was the schoolfriend my parents liked. He mastered
manipulation young, and my parents were reassured by the
state of the nation when Nelson, his hair immaculately combed, would greet them with excessive courtesy. This opposed to the inevitable grunts of my other associates. My mother was often more pleased to see Nelson than I was.
Only once did my mother have suspicions. One evening, as I
walked out to join Nelson in his car, she mused, “He does look too young to be driving.” That was probably because Nelson was indeed two years too young to have a driving licence, but since the car was stolen that didn’t matter much.

Nelson, Bizzy and I would roll through South London. You’ll
never be able to enjoy driving as much as when you’re fifteen and in a stolen car. We’d stop off and have an expensive meal (prawn cocktail, steak, black forest gateau) on one of Nelson’s stolen credit cards. We did this quite often, and we only had trouble one night, but not from suspicious waiters or the police. Nelson – normally a conscientious driver – accidentally cut up a vanload of heavies, twice our age, size and number. We were chased around for an hour, and it was the only time I saw
Nelson scared.