Imelda could have told her ma outright what Rosie had told her—girly bonding, looking for attention, who knew—or she could have dropped a hint when my da was around, just a little one to make her feel smarter than the man who was fucking her mother. Like I said, my da is no eejit. He would have put two and two together.

This time, when I rang Imelda’s buzzer, no one answered. I stepped back and watched her window: something moved, behind the net curtain. I leaned on the buzzer for a good three minutes before she snatched up the handset. “What.”

“Howya, Imelda. It’s Francis. Surprise.”

“Fuck off.”

“Ah, now, ’Melda, be nice. We need to talk.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

“Tough. I’ve got nowhere else to be, so I’ll be waiting across the road, in my car, for as long as this takes. It’s the silver 1999 Merc. When you get bored of this game, come down to me, we’ll have a quick chat and then I’ll leave you alone for life. If I get bored first, I’m going to start asking your neighbors questions about you. Have you got that?”

“Fuck off.”

She hung up. Imelda had plenty of stubborn in the tank; I figured it would take at least two hours, maybe three, before she cracked and came down to me. I headed back to my car, turned on Otis Redding and opened the window to share with the neighbors. It was a toss-up whether they would peg me as a cop, a drug dealer or a moneylender’s goon. None of the above would go down well.

At that hour Hallows Lane was quiet. An old fella on a walker and an old one polishing her brasswork had a long disapproving conversation about me, and a couple of yummy mummies gave me sideways looks on their way back from shopping. A guy with a shiny tracksuit and a large number of problems spent a solid forty minutes outside Imelda’s house, swaying back and forth and using all his remaining brain cells to shout “Deco!” up at the top window at ten-second intervals, but Deco had better things to do and eventually the guy staggered off. Around three o’clock, someone who was clearly Shania hauled herself up the steps of Number 10 and let herself in. Isabelle got home not long after. She was the living spit of Imelda in the eighties, right down to the defiant angle of her chin and the long-legged screw-you walk; I couldn’t work out whether she made me sad or gave me hope. Every time the dirty lace curtains twitched, I waved.

A little after four, when it was getting dark and Genevieve had come home from school and I had moved on to James Brown, a knuckle tapped on my passenger window. It was Scorcher.