They don’t object, walking either side of me as we head out of town towards the sea. I think Esen knows where I want to go, but Dev is obviously confused as we walk past the beach. I don’t dare look over the railing in case Charon is down there, waiting for me, slowing as we pass Poppy’s house. I turn to glance at it. The lights are on, but the one in her bedroom isn’t, so I turn my face away, walking a little faster as we approach Marine Gate.

Before we get to it, we turn left on to Whitehawk Road and as the houses get smaller and closer together, I think Dev knows where we’re going. It’s weird because I used to be embarrassed about where I lived. I always wished that we lived on Marine Parade, in a grand, wedding-cake white one with wide windows that look out on to the sea, like Poppy’s, but I feel a sudden flush of pride as I walk past the procession of houses.

Each one may look the same, this unbroken row of red-bricks that stretches from here to my estate, each one with the same neat square windows – two up, one down – the same front door and the same rectangle of grass separating it from the pavement, but people live here. Really live here. Not like Poppy’s parents, who drift from house to house, hotel to hotel, country to country, never putting roots down anywhere.

Each door is painted a different colour and while some of the gardens are tidier than others, most are well-kept and have been carefully planted with rose bushes and hydrangeas that, come summer, will bloom pink and peach and blue.

They’re not houses, they’re homes. There’s some comfort in that. In knowing that they’re either someone’s first or last house, and in each one there are people. People who, like me, have lived here all their lives. Who learnt to ride their bike here and ran after the ice-cream truck. People who just got married and are saving for a new kitchen. People who came home from hospital, cradling babies who’ll sleep in freshly painted nurseries under mobiles with giraffes and elephants that are just out of reach. People who, right now, are asleep on the sofa, open-mouthed, a half-drunk glass of wine beside them, who’ll call their grandmother in the morning to wish her a Happy New Year.

I can hear the sluggish DUM DUM DUM from a party winding down as we approach Kingfisher Court.

‘You don’t want to go in, do you?’ Dev asks, her eyes wide.

‘Of course not,’ I tell her, leading her to the playground. When her shoulders relax, I realise why she doesn’t want me to go up there and chuckle. ‘You’re not still scared of Dorito, are you?’