Phyllis flew over to London with Titch’s mum a couple of months ago, on a trip to see us and go to a musical in the West End. She had wanted to catch The Phantom of the Opera, which sounded a bit corny to me, but she was excited about it and had been reading up all about it on her iPad and egging Titch’s mum on too. She kept saying, ‘And I believe the bit where the Phantom appears is amazing.’

The pair of them were sleeping in twin beds in the spare room, which made me glad we had one, and when I passed by at night I could hear their muffled voices through the door, giggling at some joke like a couple of girls.

I wanted to say that the Phantom had been haunting the West End for so long now he was probably falling apart at the seams, but I kept quiet. It cracked me up to hear Phyllis going on like she was some kind of theatre buff – ‘the Phantom is amazing’ – with Elsie watching her wide-eyed, her mouth ajar, as though this great-aunt was the font of all theatrical knowledge.

She’s in her seventies now, a bit tottery at the joints, but when I asked her if she would be okay leaving the newsagent’s she answered me all airy like a superannuated Holly Golightly: ‘Oh don’t worry, Marty has it all under control.’

Aye, Marty.

Shortly after McGee was killed, all those years ago, Phyllis was back on the phone. In the course of the conversation she said that ‘a wee lad called Marty has been calling round to the shop, asking for any odd jobs on Saturdays. He says he knows you.’

When she mentioned his name and his recent proximity, I had felt the prickle of wariness. What’s that shivery line from the old play? Something wicked this way comes. That might seem a strange thing for an adult to say about a young boy, but there it was. My instinct was to tell him to stay away. I didn’t know what that slippery wee fella would trail in the door behind him.

‘Tell him no for now, Phyllis,’ I said. ‘I’ll have a chat with him when I’m over.’

That night I lay motionless in bed and thought about him: his permanent air of twitchiness, the restlessness in his bones. From the first time I met him, I could sense he was out searching for a wing to creep under. We both knew it, but my wing had so few feathers on it at the time. And then he wandered into the path of McGee, a bird of prey.