The Frankels were the poorest Jewish family I had ever seen. When they moved in next door to us the whole avenue supposed it would be only a matter of days before the garden was cleared and the outside of the house painted and the planning permission for extensions applied for. But months went by without a Frankel finger being raised. There was illness in the house. Monty’s father crept out coughing before dawn to work in a bakery; Monty’s mother choked with asthma and filled handkerchiefs with her blood. The For Sale sign put up by the previous owners continued to swing and was only removed from the front to the back garden at last when Monty discovered he could adapt the construction which bore it for use as his own private gallows. Every morning after that he was to be found standing beneath it on a stone, an old pyjama cord around his neck, his tongue hanging out, his eyes bulging, and his knitted yarmulkah – always his yarmulkah – on the back of his head. If I wanted to talk to him I had to meet him here, and mainly I just listened. He used to tell me how hanging worked, how long it normally took before the neck broke, and why it was an altogether inferior method of execution to the guillotine or the gas chamber. He knew of a few cases, for example, where the victim was still breathing when they cut him down; and that, he was prepared to assure me, never happened with the guillotine.

I knew that Monty would have preferred to own a more efficient system himself and I had a pampered boy’s sympathy (I was always given whatever I wanted) for someone who had to make do with second best. I also had a boy’s optimism about the possibility of change though, and I often looked out of my window expecting to see a new construction in Monty’s garden: a scaffold topped with a glistening blade, or a little brick hut with a tall chimney emitting a pall of black smoke.

One morning, before school, he gave me a nasty fright. ‘Hello Monty, how’s it going?’ I had called.

He was in his usual place on the stone beneath his gallows, his tongue protruding, his head lolling onto one shoulder. Pretty much as ever. Only on this occasion he didn’t answer.

‘Monty, are you all right?’ I asked.

There was still no answer.

I moved closer. ‘Monty?’

Silence. Monty’s tongue frothy white. Monty’s head very still. Monty’s eyes nowhere to be seen. Monty’s yarmulkah – that was what really worried me – on the ground.

I panicked. ‘Monty!’ I shouted. ‘Monty!’

I had no desire to touch a corpse, but I even began to shake him.