The waitress blinked. She took the order pad from her pocket and wrote her number and her name, Chiharu and gave June the page. ‘I have to go.’

June went back to the house feeling optimistic. Had she made a friend? Pulling off her boots in the entryway, she left the lights off; it was better that no one knew she was staying here.

Reaching the foot of the stairs, she noticed a sharp new smell, artificial pine. At the same time she heard a sound. Maybe it was the cat, back on the sofa, she thought – but then she heard footfalls, human ones.

Instantly, all her fears rushed back; this was danger, come to find her. Her first, panicked thought was that it was someone from the centre. She thought of running but she had nowhere to go. Casting about in the entryway, she grabbed the only thing she could find, the greasy old bike chain that she was meaning to toss out.

Climbing the stairs, concentrating on her soft tread, she almost didn’t see the man in the dark. He was crouched in the hallway, bent over something. As he straightened, she acted almost without thinking. In a stride she was behind him and had the chain around his neck. With a yank she dragged him backwards. She was surprised that she could do this, surprised that he gave way, his knees splaying out in front. He twisted and struggled, trying to grab her hands, grab the chain.

‘Nan darou, what’s this?’ he yelled. He was old but still strong; the chain broke when he wrenched it.

He rose to his feet, staggered. Now it was June who’d fallen, forward onto her knees. Standing over her, the man flicked the light switch on. She saw a wrinkled skeletal figure in a dirty undershirt and jeans, with black grease on his throat from the bicycle chain.

How old could he be? He could be dangerous, deranged.

‘Junko.’ He stared and laughed, an incongruous response. His laugh turned into a wheeze. He raised a hand – to strike, she thought, and flinched. Instead he tapped her cheek. ‘So it is. You’re Junko.’ He spoke in Japanese and used the Japanese form of her name. ‘I recognise you, heh-heh.’

She stared back at him, shocked. How could he possibly know who she was?

He banged his hand on his chest. ‘Koji,’ he said. He swivelled abruptly to the album on the hall table, thumbed through the pages until he found what he was looking for, and jabbed with apparent meaning at a black and white photograph. It showed two kids with bowl cuts standing on a street. The boy was the smaller of the pair, scrawny but cocky. The girl wore a dress with a sweetheart neckline.