He knew Niall had made more of an effort with his, because Niall always made more of an effort with everything. He’d started to come out of his angry young man phase and instead had become an overachiever, much to his chagrin. Niall had written a letter to his future self, which Declan had rolled his eyes at. He’d put in a school report, his prefect badge, one of his old Action Men, a Liverpool FC key ring, and other bits and pieces.

As Declan tears open the brown paper around his brother’s box, he hopes he has remembered correctly. He hopes that there, among the items his brother could not give away but wanted to hide, he will find a small bracelet. Beads of brightly coloured plastic bound together on elastic. Worth nothing, but everything.

It was the reason Declan never believed Jamesy Harte was guilty. The reason he hated his brother, and hated himself even more. Because he’d been too scared, always, to confront Niall about it. To ask him what had happened. To tell his brother he hated him for bringing him to play at the den on the day they found Kelly. Because he’d realised that Niall had known where she was all along. He’d left her there. It broke him to think his brother was capable of such horror.

He could never be best friends with someone who had killed a person.

And how else would Niall have got the bracelet if he hadn’t been the one to kill her?

It was the day after she was found when everything had clicked into place for him. That was the day he realised what Niall had done. In that moment the bottom fell out of Declan’s world. Everything that he thought was true was destroyed.

He’d been watching TV. The police appealing for information. An image of the cheap, tacky plastic bracelet flashed on screen. A solemn voice intoned that it was believed Kelly was wearing the bracelet on the night she had gone missing, but it hadn’t been found on her body.

‘God love them, but it’s probably lying at the bottom of the reservoir,’ his mammy had said.

But Declan knew it wasn’t. He knew Niall had it. In his coat pocket. Declan had found it when he lifted his brother’s coat by accident the day after Halloween, slipping his hand into the pocket. He didn’t realise then, not yet, how important it was, or what it meant. Not until now, watching the TV.

He thought of the rage his brother was in on the night he ran off. The silent procession of his da, Niall and two of his friends back down the street an hour later.

His stomach lurched, right then, in front of the TV in his cosy living room, while he sat on the sofa beside his mammy. His brother upstairs.