Kenny

Kenny is Futh’s childhood friend and, later, an awkwardly distant adult presence whose connection to both Futh and Angela reveals how much remains unspoken in their lives. He moves easily among people and practical tasks, in contrast to Futh’s reticence; their friendship persists less through confidences than through missed signals, brief reunions, and the things Futh sees but does not know how to address.

Identity and Childhood Friendship

Kenny is Gloria’s son and grew up in the house across the garden fence from Futh. The boys had been friends since the first year of junior school, despite having little in common. Kenny was sociable, often surrounded by girls or a group of boys, and enjoyed football and playing soldiers. He went orienteering with his father and could build a bicycle from scratch. Futh, less at ease with other people, preferred the school library. When Futh took apart his own bicycle and could not reassemble it, his father refused to help; Futh put the gears, chain, pedals, and other pieces in a box in the shed, keeping them in the hope that one day he would understand how to put them back together. The comparison makes Kenny’s practical competence visible alongside Futh’s uncertainty, without making their childhood friendship any less real.

At night, the boys stood at their bedroom windows and flashed torches at one another across the gardens. Their signals imitated Morse code but carried no meaning: each sent back the pattern the other had made. For Futh, the exchange resembled a distant beacon, a light that appeared and vanished while he waited in darkness for it to return. When Kenny’s light stopped, Futh knew Kenny had gone to bed and followed. The game offered connection without conversation; its image also anticipates the way their friendship would later be shaped by silence and unanswered signals. Futh sometimes carried his torch under the covers while reading books from his mother’s shelves.

Departure and Reunion

Halfway through junior school, Kenny left suddenly when his father moved out and Kenny went with him. Nobody told Futh that Kenny was going, or that he had gone. Futh continued to wait at his window on some nights, flashing his own torch and receiving no answer. The absence was not explained to him in advance; the familiar ritual simply became one-sided.

Futh did not see Kenny again until Christmas, when they met at the butcher’s. Gloria greeted Futh and his mother in the queue, while Kenny waited outside. Futh joined him and asked why he had left. Kenny answered plainly that he had gone with his father. When Futh asked why his father had left, the exchange turned to the family rupture that had separated the boys, but the available account gives no fuller explanation from Kenny. Later, Gloria took Futh into Kenny’s bedroom while sorting his belongings into a box. Kenny had asked for the things he had left behind because his father was taking him abroad. The packed-up room makes the departure concrete: Kenny was not only absent from Futh’s window but leaving behind possessions that had remained in his old home.

Adult Life and Uneasy Contact

The next recorded meeting came years later, at an open day in the local university’s Faculty of Science and Engineering. Futh was watching Angela rather than the person addressing the lecture theatre when Kenny sat beside him. Kenny had a chipped front tooth and a nose stud he said he had pierced himself; he also retained familiar signs of his earlier self, including a slight belly and bicycle oil on his hands. He approached Futh as though Futh were the one who had disappeared. Kenny had heard from Gloria that Futh would be at the open day and knew that Futh had the compass he had left behind. The object, The compass from Kenny’s room, links their adult encounter to the childhood household and the unfinished business of his departure. Kenny also noticed Futh’s attention to Angela and seemed ready to tease him, while Futh answered that he knew her from school.

Their reunion did not develop into a close friendship. Futh did not see Kenny again for a long time, and they did not keep in touch after the university meeting. Through Gloria, however, Futh learned the outline of Kenny’s adult life: after school he worked at a petrol station, then at a bicycle repair shop; he married and had children, completed a course at a local college, and became a mechanic. Later, a second-hand car dealership took him on. Gloria suggested that Futh visit Kenny there when he needed a car, since Kenny could arrange a discount. Futh thought about going to see him but put it off; by the time he bought a second-hand car in his forties, he went elsewhere. Kenny’s practical expertise was available to Futh, but their old connection did not translate into a request for help.

Even after Futh’s father moved in with Gloria, Kenny generally avoided family gatherings, including Gloria’s soirées and the Sunday dinners Futh’s father cooked. Kenny had a family of his own, with children, while Futh did not. When Futh visited his father, he sometimes found an excuse to leave the house for an hour, and Kenny’s proximity meant that they occasionally crossed paths. Their relationship thus continued at the edge of family life: near enough for encounters, but not close enough to become a habit of mutual visiting.

Encounters and the Angela Secret

One such meeting took place in a supermarket. Futh was buying meat, potatoes, and wine for his father’s Sunday lunch when the smell of fresh bread led him to the bakery section. Kenny was selecting bread rolls, squeezing them and putting them back. Asked how he was, Kenny replied that he was hungry. He picked up an iced bun with an oil-stained hand, then returned it with his thumbprint in the icing. The exchange is casual but uncomfortable in its small details: Kenny handles the food without much concern, while Futh carries the resulting awkwardness away with him.

Kenny also brought up the woman who had not remembered Futh, asking whether Futh was seeing her. Futh said he had run into her again. While Kenny looked through the gingerbread men, Futh asked about his wife and children; Kenny pointed out his wife in the biscuit aisle with their twin boys, who looked like him. Futh had put three iced buns in a bag and realized only after walking away that one bore Kenny’s thumbprint. He felt awkward about going back to exchange it in front of Kenny, so he kept it and knew he would have to eat it. The incident captures their adult manner together: Kenny speaks freely, while Futh leaves with a minor discomfort he has not resolved.

A more consequential encounter occurs when Futh, in the last year of his marriage, returns home after changing a flat tyre on his newly purchased second-hand car. Angela is pregnant again, and he initially wonders whether she has come home because she feels unwell. Instead, he sees Kenny leaving the house, smoking. Kenny appears to look through the windscreen, but Futh instinctively wants to hide; he cannot tell whether the glare has prevented Kenny from seeing him. Kenny shuts the front door, drops his cigarette stub on the doorstep, and walks away without looking back. The scene reveals Kenny’s affair with Angela through Futh’s unexpected sight of him leaving their home, while leaving the men’s silence intact.

Futh enters the house and stands for a while in the smoky hallway before going upstairs. Angela is dressing in the bedroom. When she notices him, she asks what he is doing there, then glances at the untidy bed and says she has only just got up and may be experiencing morning sickness. The explanation does not address Kenny’s departure. The encounter changes Kenny from a distant childhood friend into part of the concealed crisis inside Futh’s marriage, but the evidence offers no direct confrontation between the two men. Kenny’s defining place in Futh’s story remains bound to this pattern: he appears, is noticed, and leaves before the silence between them can be broken.