Nelson. That was the name her mum gave to the dog, after Lord Nelson, the hero of Trafalgar. It was a silly little thing, not remotely independent, let alone heroic: it was pathetic, floppy-eared, with a beseeching expression. It turned out to be quite active, needing a lot of walking.

At least this would do some good, Phoebe supposed. Yet the next time she announced she was bringing someone home, her mother said casually, as if it was no big deal, ‘Well, just so you know, James will come by to walk the dog.’

Fox face

Much later, June found ways to talk about her upbringing. In explaining what the Family was, she would bring up Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks guy.

‘You know how he spent his childhood trying to get away from a cult, going from place to place with his mother? The centre I grew up in was kind of like that, the way they sucked you in and made it hard to leave. They even used the same name, the Family.’

Oh yeah, people would say, vaguely remembering having read about Assange’s beginnings.

June thought it was strange that Assange should spend years trying to get away from a cult then create an organisation that wound up being so cult-like.

Or maybe it wasn’t strange. Some days, in a certain mood or light, it made complete sense.

To begin with, though, June didn’t know what happened to people who left. If anyone left the centre where she lived – a collection of houses and smallholdings on the outskirts of Osaka, populated by families and singles, some foreign, some Japanese – they were either brought back in disgrace or never spoken of openly again. Her friend Alastair, for example, had gone out to buy a lawnmower part one weekday in October and failed to come back. In his mid-twenties, Alastair had always seemed to June enthusiastic about life in the Family. The extraordinary fact of his departure split her being in two. She felt frightened – petrified – and at the same time emboldened.