At the junction outside the estate, on the edge of the planting, a red envelope with half a brick on it.
He knew the saying. He did not pick it up. He walked round it.
It was there the next morning. On the third day it was by the flowerbed at the estate gate. On the fourth it was inside the entrance to his block, under the ground-floor letterboxes.
He took the long way round for a week.
On the eighth morning he opened his door and it was on the mat.
He did not touch it. He fetched a broom and swept it out to the landing, into the stairwell.
When he came home that evening it was on the shoe cabinet.
He put on a pair of disposable gloves, picked it up with the kitchen tongs, put it in a freezer bag and then in a carrier bag, drove fourteen kilometres north and threw it on a building-waste tip.
He thought about it the whole way back, thought about it enough to run an amber light.
He opened his front door without putting the light on, and saw something red on the table.
The envelope is on the dining table, open. What was inside has been taken out and set beside it: a lock of hair and a slip of paper. Two sets of birth characters on the slip.
The first is his.
The second has not happened yet. It is thirty-six years from now.