It were hard to argue. It looked like somebody had left a window open during a hurricane. If I hadn’t known him I’d have thought it the house of somebody not right in the head. It was like he’d been stealing other people’s rubbish just so his own had company. Empty cans, papers, post, dirty mugs, plates that looked like those things artists hold while they’re painting. Books and newspapers and folders that spilled their sheafs of writing paper onto the mucky carpet like a lorry shedding its load. The unit by the wall that used to display little figurines and thimbles was now a dump for notebooks, all brimming over with pots of pens and brown cardboard tubes stacked like logs. There was a pair of women’s shoes on the windowsill. And the dust! I could have run my finger through the air and it would have turned black. I were embarrassed for him, truth be told. Sad he’d let it get like this. He’d always looked smart enough when he popped in. Maybe a bit crumpled but his socks matched and he didn’t smell bad. If I’d known he were living like that I’d have offered to give him a hand. Poor old soul. Was that why he kept popping to my house? Had he been escaping from the mess? Hoping I’d take pity on him and offer to show him how to live right? I felt tears pricking me eyes at that. I thought I’d cried them all out the night he died. Cried for him, and for Cordelia’s baby, and for those poor sad bones and scraps of clothes in the churchyard. Cried for myself too. Cried for telling lies.

‘You don’t think he’s been robbed, do you?’ asked Janet, all dramatic and loving it.

‘What would they take?’ I asked. ‘There’s no gaps in the mess, is what I mean. It’s not like anything seems to be missing.’

‘He must have had money. That car …’

‘He spent all he had on that car,’ I said, shaking my head and feeling bad about every bloody thing. ‘He said as much to our John. Bloody silly thing to buy.’

‘Well …’ she goes, ‘he’s paid the price right enough.’