“Be my guest.” Her latex gloves snagged on her sweaty fingers, the tips ballooning until she smoothed them down one at a time.

“You okay?”

“Fine,” she snapped, and then shook her head in apology. “I’m fine, Kash. Let’s just get it done.”

Everywhere she looked, she saw traces of the lad Kyle had been: the empty bottles and crisp packets that told of a fondness for chocolate milk and pickled onion Monster Munch, and the chewed pens tossed alongside a school assignment. She checked the submission date at the top of the homework: February 5th. He’d missed the deadline by six weeks. He didn’t have many schoolbooks, but a collection of dog-eared Harry Potter novels was stacked by his bed, as if he dipped into them when he couldn’t sleep. Their garish covers, designed to appeal to children, were a stark contrast to the gore-soaked sleeve art on the DVDs he had amassed.

Kash lifted the lid of a pizza box and recoiled at the mould-furred crusts. “I’m guessing Debbie’s not much of a cook.”

Rosie was rummaging through the detritus in the top drawer: sweet wrappers, football stickers, filthy shin pads, and school timetables, all burying the photos Kyle had torn from an ancient porn magazine. “Kashif Ahmed, are your teenage years so distant you don’t remember eating your tea and being starving again half an hour later?” she said, tucking the photos into a sticker album in the hope that Debbie wouldn’t find them.

Kash scoffed. “You haven’t met my mum, have you? If you ever finished a supper of hers and wanted so much as a wafer-thin mint in the next twelve hours, she’d consider it a personal insult.”

Rosie paused, album still in hand, to look him up and down. “How on earth do you maintain your fantastic figure?”

“I chase around after three kids, and I married a woman with a sense of moderation.” He carried a tower of polystyrene containers to the corner of the room, clearing his access to the desk’s only cupboard. “This is a nice bit of kit,” he said, pulling out a PS4 so new it was still boxed.

She shut the door and came to crouch beside him. “How the hell did he afford that? The family don’t seem to have two ha’pennies to rub together.”

“Back of a lorry?” Kash suggested. It was the most likely explanation. The majority of the loot nicked from the north side ended up traded on the south.

“Maybe.” She ran a finger over the security seals. “Unusual for it to come with its packaging intact, though.”

She went back to the drawers and emptied the middle one of underwear and T-shirts, unpairing the socks and refolding the shirts Kyle had screwed up and jammed into any available space. The bottom drawer was more of the same, except themed around jeans and sweaters and creased school uniforms.