‘When you’re in love with someone, you love every part of them. When I met your father he changed my life. You don’t understand what it was like for us, growing up the way we did. Your father’s childhood was chaotic. My family life was horrible. When we met it was like everything made sense suddenly,’ my mother explains.

I wonder if she even knows what love is.

‘You never told me how you both met.’

‘Your father worked at one of those travelling fairs. He came by my hometown a couple of years in a row and we fell for each other. When he moved on from Harlow, I decided to follow him. Then one night I caught him with one of the girls and I flew into a rage. He belonged to me. So, I hit her, hard, so many times. I choked her, almost killed her. Poor girl had to go into hospital. Your father said it was the first time in his life that he had ever felt special, or important. His dad was a really bad man,’ she says, as if Frank wasn’t, ‘and he had always felt completely isolated.’

‘So watching you beat a woman half to death turned him on, is that what you’re saying?’ You read about people like this but it never quite makes sense, how they can find each other, how the violence starts, how they first realise that this is the life they want.

‘It was like we understood each other,’ she said, as if reminiscing about happier times. ‘We tried a few times to recreate that moment, but it’s difficult here. Even when you pay the girls there’s always a risk that they won’t like the violence that comes with it.’

‘All these years I thought you didn’t know. But then they found Tim’s body and I worked out that you were the only person who could have done it. So all that time you were a part of it, too? Dad admitted that was why he wanted to travel every summer, but he said you had no part in it. Was he lying?’

‘Yes, that’s why we travelled. There are some places where it’s much easier to get away with hurting people than others. We weren’t the only ones doing it, I’m sure.’

‘But you didn’t just hurt them, did you?’

‘At first, yes – but then it went a bit further. The first time the girl died was honestly an accident. We just got caught up in the moment. I didn’t mean to kill anyone.’ My mother says this as though she is looking for sympathy, as though there is even the slightest chance that I can forgive her.

‘Oh God.’