This, then, was her earliest memory, but there were many, many subsequent times when Alison waited to be found, and she remembered them all: if not the specifics, then the cycle of sensations. She remembered, for example, the uniquely lonely feeling of extreme hunger; a wariness of encroaching night; an inarticulate infant desire for Peter to never go anywhere without her. Every time she waited for him, Alison would close her eyes and try to conjure up different places she might like to be. In a basket, with a pile of warm puppies. In a feathered nest, curled among the baby birds. In a field of corn, like a mouse, very small and hidden, very secret, very safe. Then Peter would seek her out, or come home from wherever he’d been, and he’d try to gather her up in his skinny arms, and all his warmth flowed into her, and he could always make her smile. At three, she loved him so dearly there was no space in her heart for anyone else, and still, at sixteen, she was devoted to her brother: her safe harbour, her trusted ally. When he was at work, or out with Toddy, she still listened for the sound of his key in the lock, breathed more easily when it came.

Last night, after the football, when Alison had come home from Daniel’s house and gone immediately upstairs to listen to his mix tape, Peter didn’t come home at all, but Martin Baxter did, letting himself in and raging about downstairs, looking for Catherine, shouting her name. His feet were heavy on the stairs, thundering up, pushing open Catherine’s bedroom door with so much furious force that Alison immediately got up from where she was sitting on the bed and crossed the room to open her own door before he could get to it – a small, defiant gesture, denying him his power to startle and intimidate. The Byrds were singing ‘The Girl With No Name’, and Alison was facing Martin, who stood on the landing, all sweat and grimace. She thought of Mr Lawrence in his pigeon loft, and imagined herself still there with him, imagined him placing a sleepy, placid bird into her cupped hands, imagined herself not being afraid to cradle its soft weight and feel its plump breast rising and falling against her fingers.

‘Your mother’s a slag,’ Martin said. ‘A fucking slag.’

Alison watched him. There was nothing to say.

‘Where is she?’ he demanded, his voice loose and slewed by beer. ‘Who’s she wi’?’