Jerome came right up to him, so close that he could see the tinge of his pallor and the open pores on his nose. ‘You disrespecting me?’

‘No, Jerome.’ Suddenly Larry really wished he’d gone with the girls back to Georgia’s place.

Something caught Jerome’s eye over Larry’s shoulder and he jerked his head up, laughing cruelly. ‘Oh man. My day just got a whole lot better. Look who it is – the Crazy Baby Lady.’

Larry glanced behind him to see a very small, very wide old lady swaddled up, despite the heat of the day, in so many layers of drab clothing that she could hardly walk. She had dirty silver gaffer tape holding her shoes together, and her scalp showed through a few remaining wisps of candyfloss hair. The lady was pushing – or, rather, hanging on to – the handle of a very old-fashioned rusty pram that was full of something Larry couldn’t quite make out at first.

‘She’s well old,’ Larry commented. ‘Why’s she got that pram?’

‘Cos her “baby” ’s in there, innit. All her babies.’ Jerome laughed meanly and a shiver ran up Larry’s back. What sort of babies would that homeless-looking woman have? Dead foetuses? Mangy old cats, perhaps. Frankie’s innocent face flashed through his mind, and he shivered again. There were so many weirdos in the world.

But at that moment, he’d have chosen the Crazy Baby Lady over Jerome, any time.

Jerome pimp-rolled over to the old woman and her hooded red eyes flashed with fear and fury.

‘Git aways from me!’ she screeched, trying to turn the heavy old pram. She pointed at him with a shaky finger. ‘You’re a bad man!’

Jerome mimicked her in a high-pitched mocking voice. Then he stuck his face close to hers and dropped his voice two octaves. ‘You is right. I is a BAD man.’ He was showing off, thought Larry with disdain.

Jerome darted his hand into the pram which, Larry saw with a brief shock of cognizance that he felt physically in his belly, was full of dolls. Dirty, charity shop sad cases, rag dolls with stuffing spilling out, naked Barbies with matted hair, blank Bratz dolls wearing nothing but stilettos and bras. They were all piled on top of each other, reminding Larry of when they studied the Holocaust in Year Nine, the unforgettable images of naked gassed bodies in unspeakable heaps that, although he never admitted it to anyone, gave him nightmares for weeks afterwards.

But Jerome seemed to know exactly what he was looking for in his sinister lucky dip. He grabbed at the doll on the top, a slightly cleaner, better-cared-for one in a stained pale blue Babygro. They were supposed to be able to blink, those dolls, although this one had one eye stuck open, and the other stuck shut.

The old woman wailed, a heartrending screech of pain.