They go on the dodgems and waltzers and then have lunch in a caff – fried egg sandwiches and chips, with strong tea to follow. Angela wants to find ‘Jacques Derrida’, so they head into the shopping streets. In the flagstoned alleys of the old town they look at the curved-glass shopfronts, the dates in the masonry and the painted brickwork ads, and they browse the displays of junk shops and earmark the good-looking pubs for later. Lisa holds Angela’s ice cream as Angela combs through the records on a market stall. It has some Scritti Politti but not that song. She gets directions to a second-hand place a few streets away. It’s got a wire grille on the windows and black-painted walls. It’s shut, but she rings the residential bell and the owner answers.

The stock is piled high and the man is knowledgeable, and finds Angela the record. Sipping a coffee and smoking a rollie, he lets her listen to it and she buys it. She leaves the shop triumphantly, brandishing the carrier bag, and he locks up again.

‘I’ve got the words all going round my head now,’ she says.

‘Cashanova,’ says Lisa. ‘How you gonna work that in?’

Angela packs ‘Jacques Derrida’ carefully into her bag.

From the record shop they follow the signs to the Shell Grotto. They pass the Tudor House and take a quick detour into its grounds, making a plan to visit it properly before they leave in the morning.

‘Is this where you remember it being?’ says Lisa, as they walk up Dane Road.

Angela looks around her at the streets and houses. ‘Maybe. Although I think it was less built up, more a quiet country lane.’

‘Not much countryside around here though.’

As they approach the grotto, Angela says, ‘I don’t think this is it.’

‘Let’s go inside.’ Lisa goes in.

‘It didn’t look like this,’ says Angela. ‘It had a garden.’

‘Could it have been redeveloped?’ says Lisa, coming out.

‘I remember, very clearly, standing in the lane,’ says Angela. ‘My brother was leaning on the gatepost. I think we were waiting for my father.’

‘Come on in.’ Lisa pulls Angela in and pays for their tickets.

‘We close at four,’ the woman says.

‘This isn’t it,’ says Angela, looking around the walls and shaking her head. ‘There are no shells here.’

‘The shells are downstairs,’ says the ticket attendant, smiling.

‘Come on,’ says Lisa, taking Angela’s hand and pulling her to the stairwell.

Its walls are black and caked with something that looks and smells like slime. A very faint glow of lamps lights the narrow steps. The girls descend the spiral staircase, Lisa leading and Angela following, clutching the back of Lisa’s hooded top.

The stuff on the walls is oxidized shells set into blackened mortar. As they climb into the blackness the smell gets stronger – damp and cold-dark-places and stagnation, with perhaps an undernote of sulphur.