For her party piece Lauren sings ‘Bat Out Of Hell’. She’s rehearsed this several times in her bedroom, but when she starts to sing, her throat feels as though it is trying to close up. ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ is a song her dad puts on in the pickup or when he is frying bacon on a Sunday morning. One summer he opened the windows and blasted it at Jehovah’s Witnesses walking up their empty stretch of road. She wishes he was here to listen to her. He doesn’t like being polite if he doesn’t have to be, unlike Kirsty or her husband Craig. He’s the kind of man who slips away, unnoticed, any chance he gets. People in Strath Horne, their closest town, raise their eyebrows at this sort of thing.

Alan Mackie reaches down and hands Lauren one of the Mars bars laid out on the low glass-topped table between them. He puts his hand on his back as he leans forward to do so. There is a large chip on the coffee table’s wooden frame, as if something heavy has fallen on it. Alan’s cardigan looks itchy and a button is missing, exposing his off-white polo shirt. He wheezes to Billy’s mum, ‘We’ll be seeing her on the telly, eh? X Factor.’ He ruffles Billy’s hair and gives him a Mars bar, too, as they get ready to leave. He says, leaning towards Billy in his football kit, ‘And this one’ll be the next Billy Dodds, eh? Billy Matheson.’ His laugh takes all of his breath. Lauren doesn’t see what’s funny.

She runs as fast as she can down the cottage driveway until she is warm. It makes her cape, a split bin bag, float in the air. She laughs a pantomime laugh. ‘I’m your arch-nemesis!’ she says in an American voice.

‘What’s that?’ Billy is not far behind.

‘It’s me!’ Lauren swirls around. ‘Can we go guising to Diane’s?’ she asks his mother.

‘It’s a bit too far, love,’ says Kirsty. ‘We’d have to walk a couple of fields in the dark. Anyway, I expect she’ll be busy looking after her mum. We’d best not disturb.’

‘I never see her though,’ Lauren says in a sing-song voice, knowing she shouldn’t.

‘Do you not see her on the bus, with the older kids?’ asks Kirsty, brisk and dismissive.