It had rained all night, and the dip in the path by the bench had turned into a proper puddle — the size of a small pond, flat as glass, holding the whole sky in it.
Tayo was kicking stones into it. Fifteen, school bag on one shoulder, bored in the way only a fifteen-year-old on a Saturday can be. Plunk. Rings spread out. Plunk. More rings.
Samuel watched him from the bench for a while. Then he said, “Every one of those went somewhere, you know.”
Tayo shrugged. “It’s a puddle.”
“Watch.”
Tayo kicked another stone. The rings spread out, reached the edge, touched the grass, and rocked a crisp packet floating on the far side. Then the water settled again, but the reflection of the tower block wobbled for a long time after.
“So?” said Tayo. But he sat down on the end of the bench.
Samuel didn’t answer straight away. He never does.
“When I was about your age,” he said eventually, “a woman who ran the youth club said something to me. I’d asked her a question — I can’t even remember what about. And she looked at me and said, ‘You ask good questions, Samuel. Don’t stop.’”
Tayo waited. “That’s it?”
“That’s it. Seven words. She probably forgot she’d said it by teatime.” Samuel looked out at the puddle. “I’m seventy now. I still hear it. It’s half the reason I sit on this bench asking people questions.”
Tayo was quiet for a moment. “That’s kind of mad.”
“It is, isn’t it.” Samuel smiled. “And the other way round, too. There’s things people said to me that I’m still carrying, and I wish I wasn’t. Careless things. They probably forgot those by teatime as well.”
Tayo picked up another stone. Turned it over in his fingers. He didn’t kick it this time.
“So everything you say goes somewhere,” he said slowly.
“Most things,” said Samuel. “Not all of it lands. But you don’t get to choose which bits do. You only get to choose what you throw.”
Tayo looked at the stone in his hand for a long time. Then he put it in his pocket.
“Thinking about who I said stuff to this week,” he said.
Samuel nodded, and didn’t say anything else. He didn’t need to.