“Watch yourself, pet,” she said by way of greeting as she stood aside to let Laura into the reception area which reeked of white spirit. Her smile was warm, though she looked tired.

“We’ve got most of the red paint off, but if you light a match the place’ll go up like a bomb,” she said.

“Don’t give the tearaways ideas,” Laura said. “Is my grandmother here?”

“In t’ back with Kevin,” Donna said. “He’s brought some mate of his from London with him. A DJ? To talk to t’ kids?” Donna rolled her eyes to heaven in mock despair at the preoccupations of teenagers and waved Laura on into the building.

Laura made her way into the small kitchen where she found Joyce in animated conversation with Mower and Dizzy B, one white head and two dark ones, and, unexpectedly, three pairs of laughing eyes.

“Did you know your amazing grandmother saw Louis Armstrong in the 1950s?” Mower said, glancing up as Laura came in. “Satchmo himself and I didn’t even know she was into jazz. The boss would be impressed.”

“There’s lots of things I don’t know about what Joyce got up to in her misspent youth,” Laura admitted with a grin. “She’s not old enough to have been a suffragette but you can bet your life she’d have been chaining herself to railings if she’d had the chance.”

“Tried that at Greenham Common,” Joyce said tartly.

“She told me she was on the first Aldermaston march too, and every one after that, and the riot in Grosvenor Square,” Laura said. “Though I’m sure that’s not for police consumption. I bet MI5 have still got her on their files.”

Mower put a finger to his lips and glanced at the door to where Donna could be heard belting out ‘Look for the Hero Inside Yourself’ as she worked.

“We don’t know any coppers here, remember?” he said. “And certainly not any spooks.”

“They came to interview me once, M15,” Joyce said unexpectedly, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “When George Blake escaped. You remember? The Russian spy? Thought I might know summat about it.”

“And did you?” Mower asked.

“Well if I did, I don’t think I’d tell you, even after all these years,” Joyce said primly. “What you youngsters forget, though, is that we won most of those battles in the end. Only the miners lost and I’ll never forgive some folk who should have known better for that.”

Mower grinned, and glanced at Dizzy B.

“This is Laura,” he said. “A chip off the old block.” Mower looked happier behind his piratical black beard than she had seen him for months, Laura thought, and her own heart lifted slightly in response.

“I’ve met the reporter lady,” the DJ said, a wary look in his eyes. “Was it you who put me on the front page of your rag this morning?”

Laura shook her head.

“That was our enterprising crime reporter, Bob Baker,” she said. “Nothing to do with me.” Dizzy B glanced at Mower uncertainly.

“You can believe it,” Mower said. “Baker’s got someone at the nick in his back pocket and the brass would dearly love to know who. It’s been going on for a while.”

“I thought that sort of thing only happened in American crime novels,” Dizzy B said.

“Well, if you imagine the Gazette’s paying anyone to leak stuff I should think again,” Laura said. “Getting your bus fare to the town hall paid by my boss is like getting blood out of a stone. I don’t think even Bob Baker could persuade him to bribe coppers, not because of any moral scruples, you understand, but because he’s too damn tight with the petty cash.”

Joyce stood up suddenly, as if irritated by the younger generation’s chatter.

“Have you heard anything from the town hall about funding for this place, pet?” she asked. And when Laura shook her head her face tightened and aged perceptibly.

“I can’t get any sense out of that lad Spencer,” she said. “One minute it’s all in hand, and the next he’s making excuses. I don’t think he gives a tuppeny damn about the kids up here when it comes to the point. Calls himself a councillor but all he’s really after is a safe seat at the next general election. And he’ll more likely get that by buttering up businessmen than by looking after the folk who elected him, more’s the pity. They’ve lost sight of what they’re there for, a lot of them. It’s a disgrace.”

“I’ll talk to the guy who covers the town hall when I go back to the office,” Laura said. “He must have some idea of what’s going on.”

“I reckon they’ve got some scheme for rebuilding up here which ignores what the locals want,” Joyce said bitterly. “You’d think they’d have leant from the mistakes we made when we built these flats. Thought we knew best. Never asked folk if they actually wanted to live in prefabricated concrete rabbit warrens. You’d think they’d know better than to make the same mistake again.”

“I’ll check it out, Nan,” Laura said feeling helpless. “Do you want me to run you home now?”

Joyce shook her head vigorously.

“There’s a couple of young lasses coming in with their babies at three,” she said. “We’re going to do some reading. They’re worried out of their heads because they’re being told to help their kiddies with books and all that and they can barely read themselves.”

“What are you like?” Laura said, giving Joyce an enthusiastic hug.

“There’s always summat to do,” Joyce said, her eyes shining again. “It’d be nice to think things have got better for folk up here, but there’s not much sign of it.”

“Give it time,” Laura said, although she knew that Joyce had already given it a lifetime.

“Do you have some time?” Mower broke in. “You know what you were talking about with Dr. Khan? Dizzy met some kids this morning he’d like us to talk to. One of them’s a mate of the lad who went off the roof of Holtby House. You said you wanted to write about what’s going on up here. They might make you some good copy.”

Laura glanced at her watch and nodded.

“Half an hour,” she said.

“You’ll have to go without me then,” Mower said. “I’ve got some kids coming in to work on the computers in five minutes.” Laura glanced at Kevin Mower with affection.

“Michael won’t know where you’re coming from when you get back to work,” she said.

“If,” Mower said so softly that Laura was not sure she heard him.

“Anyway, I’m sure Dizzy and I can cope for now,” she said.

Laura followed the DJ out into the relentless rain. As they hurried in silence across the muddy grass towards Holtby House there was a dull explosion of splintering glass behind them. Laura glanced back and saw that there was a smashed bottle on the concrete where a smashed bottle had not been before. She glanced up at the walkways of Priestley House above them but could see no one. Dizzy B shrugged.

“Someone round here doesn’t like strangers,” he said.

“It’s getting worse,” Laura said. “It’s more threatening than it’s ever been.”

“It can’t be bad if they’re pulling these stinking places down, can it?” Sanderson said as they pushed open the swinging doors of Holtby and set off up the steep concrete stairway where the justice of his epithet became immediately apparent. They hurried to the top and stepped slightly breathlessly out onto the walkway where the slanting rain struck them again with icy force but at least the air smelt clean.

“Of course it’s not bad,” Laura said. “It’s what they replace them with that’s the issue. And what’s going to happen to the people who live here now. That’s what’s bothering my grandmother.”

“You mean they might dump them on some other sink estate?”

“They’re talking about building private housing up here. In that case there may well be a problem re-housing the tenants. They’re not the sort of people who can afford to buy.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ve seen all that in London. Put some gates on the council estates, turn the hallway into an atrium, paint the railings round the balconies bright colours, call the flats apartments and flog them off to yuppies. Not only do you upgrade the property but you get lots of middle-class voters in as well. Before you know it you’ve guaranteed your majority on the local council and put a Tory MP into Parliament as well.”