The green strip behind the house was a burial ground until the eighties. They cleared it before he was born.
On the inside of the back wall there is a damp patch about a person's height, narrower at the top than at the bottom.
Every summer he paints it out. White, two coats. It comes back the following year the same shape.
He photographs it, once a year, same position, same angle. He has six.
Overlaid on the computer, the six outlines match to under a centimetre.
The seventh was wrong.
Shorter. Narrower at the shoulders.
The eighth, shorter again.
He lined all eight up by year and measured each one, writing the heights out: one seventy-two, one seventy-two, one seventy-two, one seventy-two, one seventy-two, one seventy-two, one forty-nine, one ten.
His son is seven. They marked his height on the door frame the day before yesterday. One ten.