But they hadn’t fled. Bala’s father was up a ladder, nailing plywood over a smashed upstairs window. All the others had been boarded up.

‘Hi, Mr Pazic.’

Mr Pazic looked down at him, said nothing, and carried on hammering. Sam guessed they blamed Karza for pressuring Bala to go with him to Syria.

The front door wasn’t locked. He pushed it open. From the front room came the sound of a TV talk show turned up loud.

‘Anyone home? It’s Sam.’

In the semi-darkness, he could just make out a small child gazing at him from a doorway before she was pulled back. A woman’s face appeared. He almost didn’t recognize her: Bala’s sister, Jana. She kept her eyes lowered. Another ghost from his past – but one he wasn’t unhappy to see. ‘Jana. Hello. Is Bala home? I need to talk to him.’

She looked at him for what seemed a long time, a mixture of emotions passing over her face, like fast-moving clouds. Somewhere under the pasty olive skin and tired, sunken eyes was the idealistic teenager he had once kissed in the bus shelter. The headscarf made her seem much older, as did the expression of sullen resignation. He nodded at the child clinging to her skirt. ‘Yours?’

She said nothing, but indicated the room where the TV sound was coming from. He knocked, but the volume was too high. She stepped forward and hammered on the door. ‘Bala! Someone here for you.’

There was no answer. She shrugged. ‘Just go in.’

‘Why’s he got it up so loud?’

She stared at him for a few seconds. ‘He says it drowns it out – the stuff in his head. That and the skunk.’

The room was thick with the sweet, heavy smoke. Sam looked back at her and smiled, but she gazed past him blankly and pulled the child into the kitchen.

The TV volume shot up as the door swung open.

‘And I’m tellin’ ’im, she shows ’er face round our ’ouse, I’ll not be answerable for my actions, bladdered or not. Same goes for any of them kids what he’s had with her.’

On the TV a huge woman in a strapless top was jabbing the air with a heavily ringed finger. Two other women, similar but younger, were holding on to her as if she was liable to launch herself at the skinny, bearded, ponytailed man she was pointing at, seated in a separate chair the other side of Jeremy Kyle.

Sam focused on the solitary armchair pulled up close to the screen. He wouldn’t have recognized Bala. The beard was new, as was the shaved head. A stick lay tucked against the chair. He had put on at least twenty kilos. He wore a khaki vest and shorts. The stump of his left leg was wrapped in gauze.

‘Hey, bro.’

Bala lifted his eyes and frowned.

‘It’s Sam, Karza’s brother.’