Now Lou buys the beautiful things she always wanted: designer clothes, expensive lipsticks, handbags, sunglasses. She wears needly stilettos every day. Her bunions are unbelievable.

But her beautiful things all end up ruined in one way or another; the lipstick mashed all through her bag in a bloody, waxy, high-pigment mess, a pen exploding in a beautiful suit jacket, pair after pair of sunglasses sat on or stood on or lost. Her collection of expensive heels lies, a black and tan jumble, on the floor of her room.

Lou is a criminal defence barrister. Her cases have never shocked me because I grew up with her telling me about them. A man caught sending explicit emails to a thirteen-year-old. A man who worked in a women’s clothing shop and installed hidden cameras in the change-rooms. A man who had been an anaesthetist, who touched women when they were unconscious.

When I was a child, Lou tried to use the law to frighten me. For example: I had a habit of thievery. One day I filled my pockets with chocolate bars while Lou stuffed the trolley with Lean Cuisine and Rice Bubbles.

When she realised what I’d done, she didn’t make me take them back. We ate them together. Behind us, on the mute TV, cartoons went on in their manic way, flashing and racing in ugly primary colours.

‘I need to explain something to you,’ she said, flaying the wrapper from a bar of chocolate. ‘I’m studying to be a lawyer. Do you know what that means?’

I nodded. I knew this one. ‘You put people in jail.’

‘Exactly,’ Lou said. She hadn’t specialised in pervs yet, on keeping them out instead of putting them in.

‘And if you steal things – that means, you take something without paying for it first, or you take something that’s not yours – you could go to jail.’

My heart sickened at this. ‘Will I go to jail?’

‘Not this time,’ Lou said. ‘But next time you might not be so lucky. Do you know what happens in jail?’

I shook my head, my eyes fixed on the way her features all drew together towards the centre of her face.

‘You go to the electric chair.’

She went on to explain that this was a chair that would fry me to death, fry me until I crumbled like a piece of burned toast. My eyeballs would explode.

‘So next time you’re going to steal something,’ Lou said, ‘be very, very careful.’