Memory isn’t a camera. It’s an anthill, a thing of layers, built around a central core. And inside the core, there are sleeping things. Things that change, and sting, and fly. Things that come out of the walls at night, and crawl all over everything.

But now, at last, after seven years of misery and self-hatred, I was finally starting to see. Those things I did, when I was a boy—those terrible things—they weren’t my fault. Poodle, the rabbits, Ratboy, and all—they were all part of my trauma. I wasn’t possessed. I wasn’t bad. Those things were a Coping Mechanism, brought on by My Condition, and if I’d felt aggressive, confused—even weirdly exhilarated—who could really blame me? That was just part of what I’d been through. Symptoms of an inner disease.

I tried very hard to remember it now. I searched my soul. I prayed a lot. Miss McRae taught me how admitting weakness can also be strong, and said how proud she was of me. That was nice; it had been a long time since anyone had been proud of me. It made me show off a bit, perhaps, and by the time I saw where it was leading, I couldn’t have stopped it if I’d tried. Not that I really wanted to. I was rather enjoying it all. My victimhood was a novelty; the sympathy made me feel special. The other boys from my year at St. Oswald’s were going to college; driving cars; getting girls. The other boys had had their names painted onto the Honours Boards. Where were my Honours? Where was my name? Why was I the only one to be left behind?

It had been nearly seven years since the death of Lee Bagshot. People had mostly forgotten him, except for his mother, I suppose. The death of a boy from the slums is never as widely reported as the death of a little girl. We’d already seen that in Malbry with the death of Emily White—flowers and teddy bears on the streets, prayer groups, charities, letters to the local MP. The Emily White affair lasted months. Lee Bagshot was gone in a week or so. Of course, there’d been nothing to link his death to violence of any kind. It was a tragic accident, that people blamed on the Council, for not putting up enough warning signs and barbed wire around the clay pits. But when I started to recall what had happened seven years ago, the case of Lee Bagshot suddenly seemed to acquire a new distinction. And then, at last, when the trial began . . .