When I called round Titch was up in his room. He was lying on his bed, reading his mother’s Bella magazine. He had it pulled open at the recipe section. When he saw me come in, he let it slide to the ground: a full-colour picture of Thai fishcakes with a tiger prawn garnish winked garishly up at us both.

I skated over the pervasive air of hopelessness. ‘I’ve got a job, Titch. I’m going to start as a barman at the Whistle on Tuesday. If you come into town to see me, I’ll treat you to a pint of lager, cider or orange squash for free, as an introductory offer. We need new customers.’

I knew there was no way he would come into town yet, but I wanted to ruffle him out of this awful torpor. I wanted to goad him into being cheeky to me again.

‘I’m not going out of the house,’ said Titch, sulkily. ‘I don’t want them fellas to get hold of me and do what they done last time.’

‘Titch, they’re not going to do you all over again just for the heck of it. They’ve already done you once.’

‘They’re not in jail, are they? There’s nothing to stop them, if they want to.’

I couldn’t argue with that. He had the relentless, correct logic of a child sometimes. The hopelessness came back to fill the small room, washing over me, touching the useless frills on the beige nylon curtains and the pointless, grinning Toby jug on the windowsill that his uncle had brought him back from Yorkshire. In my desire to shove it away, to jolt Titch out of his own grim reasoning, I threw in something even worse.

‘But Titch, it makes no difference anyway whether you go out or stay in. In fact, you’d be better off going out. They came up and got you here, didn’t they? They pulled you right out of this room, didn’t they?’

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew I should never have said them. He stared at me for a second as though I had just smacked him full in the face. And then his expression began to disintegrate, falling apart into shapes that would have been almost comic if they hadn’t been so terrible. He was moving violently from side to side, putting his elbows up to shield his head, and all the time making the high-pitched wailing sound of some trapped animal in distress.