It was tempting. He winced at the thought of having to go to a strange, alarming place and ask for Angela. Ask to see a drug addict, a junkie—wasn’t that what they called them? Perhaps she would be in bed, in one of those intimidating, high white hospital beds, with other people in the same room, other…junkies. And how would he manage to talk to her, how could he possibly bridge this huge furrow that had ploughed its way through their friendship? Maybe she wouldn’t even want him to see her in a place like that. A memory of a photograph stirred in his mind, something he’d once seen in a magazine, shock tactics to warn kids about drugs. It had shown a girl, eyes black-rimmed, skin white as death, slumped on a squalid concrete floor. Fleetingly, he saw Angie’s face superimposed on the photograph…

He spent an agonised half hour, decided to leave the house at once and visit her and get it over with, then finding dozens of tame excuses to avoid it. For instance, he could just write to her casually instead. Could phone the Easterbrooks and ask for the Lakeview address, giving some reason—Angie had lent him a book and he wanted to send it on, or she’d forgotten to return a pen of his and he wanted it back—but none of those excuses sounded convincing. And besides, there was the rag doll, for which he had taken responsibility. He glared at it morosely, knowing that he couldn’t take something like that on public transport, it would have to be disguised. He wrapped it in a striped tablecloth of Thelma’s, the first thing to hand, and shoved the whole lot into a plastic bag. Then he climbed over the back fence into the alley.

‘Strewth, Angie,’ he thought with despair, gazing down the dangerous length of the alleyway, buffeted by all his fears. ‘The things I do for you…’