And I was screaming Nesha’s name as the uniformed officers threw themselves on the boy, knocking him off his feet and pinning him to the deck with his face buried in the pavement of Warwick Square. And as the fight went out of him and he began to weep for his lost sister and for himself, I saw it all at once.

The knife still in Nesha’s right hand.

The blood pouring from the wounds in Warboys’ neck.

As uniformed officers bundled him inside the gates of the Old Bailey, I shouted Nesha’s name.

But the boy was already behind locked doors.

I sat on the steps of the Old Bailey with Dejan Jovanović.

The crowds who had waited for a glimpse of the accused had gone home, sleeping on buses and trains to the faraway edges of the city, and they would not return until the night came and their shift began.

‘What will happen to the boy?’ Dejan said.

‘They’ll put him away,’ I said. ‘In the eyes of the law, Nesha’s still a child so he’ll go to a Young Offenders’ Institution, probably Feltham in Middlesex.’ I thought about Nesha in that place and it was not a good moment. ‘And then, at the end of that, they’ll throw him out of the country. Deport him.’ I shook my head. ‘What a bloody mess.’

‘But this is a kind country.’

‘You think so, Dejan?’

He nodded, staring thoughtfully at his cigarette.

‘You don’t send people back to their own country if it’s too dangerous.’

‘But there’s no war where Nesha comes from, is there?’

‘Not now,’ he said, dragging deeply on his cigarette, and I remembered that Dejan Jovanović of the Serbian embassy was a man who had twice worn a soldier’s uniform, and who had picked up broken bodies in two wars.

I watched him smile sadly.

‘But who knows what terrible things will be happening in this world when Nesha Novak finally comes out?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘You never know your luck.’

38

The days were growing longer now and for the first time in months, natural light poured through the large windows of our loft as Scout and Stan were fed by Mrs Murphy.

We had put away our winter clothes. We had turned the radiators off. And Scout was suddenly an inch taller. The season had turned.

My daughter and my dog both glanced up from their dinner as I came out of the bedroom.

‘Why are you dressed like that?’ Scout asked with a mouth full of pasta.

I was wearing my new suit, white shirt and blue tie. I usually only dressed like this when I was getting married or going to a funeral.

‘It’s called style, Scout,’ I said, touching her brown bell of hair.

Mrs Murphy smiled.

‘It’s called a date, Scout,’ she said.

I was embarrassed. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not a date.’