Lewis begins to wail. His dinosaur costume has become grimy and snot-streaked. ‘C’mon,’ says Kirsty. ‘It isn’t that bad a joke.’ The wailing grows into a scream and she looks uphill towards Niall’s parked truck in the distant smudge of the phone-box light. ‘Look, you guys go on ahead. He doesn’t like the cold, so we’ll go and sit a while with Niall. C’mon, you. No sweeties.’

Lauren chews her lip.

‘On you two go to Angela’s. It’s not that far.’

‘Is Dad coming?’ asks Lauren.

‘You know he’s not her biggest fan. C’mon. She won’t bite.’

Now alone, Lauren and Billy approach the third house, tucked away on a narrow side road, guarded by trees. They walk through its open black gates and up its curved drive, their feet sinking into tiny pebbles stolen from the local beach. Either side, scrawny birches bend back in the wind.

Angela and Malcolm Walker answer the door in soft Tattersall shirts, each leaning against a heavy stone wall. They look over their shoulders in tandem and call ‘Ann-Marie!’ into the gloomy hall. Ann-Marie Walker is home from boarding school. She appears, sixteen and pale with dark eyes like her father, hair the colour of school shoes. A silver stud catches the light in the left side of her nose.

‘Your hair’s so short now,’ says Lauren, stepping in from the cold and standing by the overloaded coat stand. She didn’t know boys’ hair could look good on girls. When Ann-Marie turns her head, Lauren counts the piercings on her right ear, unwittingly touching her own.

‘She takes them out during term time,’ Angela Walker says. Her accent is threaded with English vowels, though she has never lived there.

Ann-Marie gives her mother a look and shakes her head.

‘Came home full of metal,’ says Malcolm Walker in his Lowlands accent. ‘I said she’s to be careful she doesn’t end up with an ear like a Swiss cheese!’

‘Dad.’ With a backward glance, Ann-Marie slips back down into the cellar that is now a kitchen. Lauren has opened her mouth to sing but watches her disappear, crestfallen.

After ‘Bat Out Of Hell’, Angela and Malcolm Walker clap their hands and nod. Angela passes a flowery plate of toffee apples from the hall table, her auburn hair escaping its tortoiseshell clip. ‘They’re from the orchard,’ she says.

Lauren picks one up. It feels unwieldy on its thin stick. She tries to bite into it, but the amber glaze is solid and her teeth scrape against the sugar. She asks to see their Irish wolfhounds, big as bears, kept in the converted kitchen cellar.