Full sleeve of 1980s cartoon characters and stars

She put down the secateurs and fetched the biscuit tin from the shed, the one with the faded lid that smelled of creosote and cough sweets. Inside were stickers she had saved from the summer of 1986: fat pastel bears with heart badges, a cloud with a sleepy face, a pink-haired woman in a sequinned gown holding a star like a microphone. "Your mum wanted them all on her wardrobe," Pearl said. "I told her a wardrobe isn't a noticeboard." Dale peeled one off. The glue had gone to tissue, so the bear stuck to his thumb like a small wet rainbow.

"Did she get the wardrobe?"

"She got the back of the door." Pearl took the sticker from him, studied it for a long moment, then pressed it onto the handle of the watering can. When she turned on the tap, the spray caught the sun and threw a thin arc of green and violet and orange over the bed, bands of colour that hung for a second above the thorns before falling on the lawn.

Dale sat up, let the spray hit him full in the face, and shouted. Pearl laughed for the first time that week, a short bark of a laugh, and the bear on the can handle shone bright and dripping in the light. "Right," she said, handing him the hose. "Now you can help with the roses."