He blinks. ‘I just think … well, the mind, it plays tricks on you, doesn’t it? I read an article about memory, how you can be convinced things happened one way when they couldn’t have. Memory is unreliable.’

I shrug. The rain starts to fall heavier now. I can see it pooling in the wells of the muddy footprints we’ve left.

‘Do you believe in the bogeyman?’ he asks.

It’s such a strange question, it makes me smile at first. I shake my head, then remember the memory I can’t quite place of the man on the street and his beckoning finger, and the way I didn’t know if it was a dream or real but how my heartbeat quickens every time I think of him.

‘When I was a child, yes,’ I tell him. ‘We all did. Didn’t we? That blasted “Who’s At The Window” song – it scared me stupid when I was wee. There was once when I was convinced I saw him, too. Not long after Kelly had died, I think. It’s all so muddled in my head. A man dressed in black in the street, in the middle of the night. He looked right up at my window.’

‘Did you see his face?’ Niall asks, his face stony.

I shake my head. ‘He was in the shadows. I told my parents about it afterwards; they told me it was most likely just a bad dream.’

He sighs. It’s a sigh that is laced with pain and regret. His body slumps.

‘I used to think it was a dream, too. I think it was easier that way,’ he says. ‘It was so hazy. I was so scared of what would happen if people found out. I’d be in so much trouble. The kind of trouble you can’t come back from.’

‘Niall.’ I say his name again, but he is lost in his thoughts.

‘I didn’t mean for any of it to happen. It wasn’t my fault, you see. I’d had a fight with my da and, well, you know what he was like then. He’d gone mad because I’d cut up one of his old shirts to make a Frankenstein costume. It was an old, battered thing. Ma thought he wouldn’t mind, but of course he did. He’d pick a fight in an empty room when he got into that state.

‘I came home from collecting all my nuts and apples. Pure delighted with myself. And there was my da and all his cronies with him. All drinking and having a great time to themselves. He noticed the shirt right away and of course he couldn’t let it go. Even though his friends were there. All those big men and not a one of them telling him to go easy.