But it was the Chamber of Horrors the boys loved – particularly the alley of famous murderers. Robert insisted on reading out highlights of information about each terrible scene, mouthing the worst of the words exaggeratedly to Paul.

‘He AXED his wife to death… filled the bath full of ACID… DISSECTED his victims with a Stanley knife… STUFFED the bodies inside the wall cavities … ’

It went on and on, the both of them laughing as Robert widened his eyes at the horrors.

I didn’t find the waxworks lifelike in the least. Their hair was too thick, too low on the forehead, or else their noses were too large, or their hands bent at slightly odd angles. It was the settings that disturbed me: how these murders seemed to happen on ordinary streets, in living rooms like ours. The cosy wallpaper that covered up the cracks where the bodies were stuffed; the bath full of acid with the rusty taps and blackened overflow. I was sure we had the same bath mat as Christie.

‘Which one’s your favourite, Dad?’ Robert asked.

‘Sleeping Beauty,’ I replied.

part two

Joanna

one

Summer, 1984

Dad starts it off with me and Shane.

I know he feels sorry for him, after the accident. Everyone in Calcot knows about it. Everyone knows Shane’s Dad, Derrick, can’t have looked. Was probably drunk. Everyone knows about the lorry that pushed them onto the verge of the Darvington Road, crushing the side where Shane sat. He was unconscious for days. Every day Mum would say, ‘Poor Sheila. Poor Sheila.’ And Dad would say, ‘It could happen to anyone.’

It didn’t stop Shane’s dad driving, but he left soon after that. Now Shane and his mum never go anywhere. Poor buggers.

‘Why don’t you go and see that boy down the road, Joanna?’ Dad asks. He knows Shane’s older than me, bigger than me, but that doesn’t seem to bother him. ‘Why don’t you go and cheer him up a bit? He’s been through a lot.’

‘He’s bloody backward, that Shane Pearce, Dan,’ says Mum. ‘Don’t go on at her.’

‘He’s not backward,’ says Dad. ‘I know he’s not.’

Then there’s an argument about what backward means, with Mum saying you can’t trust Shane, everyone knows what he gets up to. Nicking stuff from Old Buggery’s shop, hanging about late at night down the pools, scaring other kids. ‘Someone saw him with a flick knife,’ says Mum.

‘I’ve never seen the boy leave the house,’ says Dad.

All summer Dad encourages Shane to come over. Shane doesn’t actually come in the door. He always stays outside. Dad pays him to help clean our car or paint the gate or clip the hedge. They work in silence, and from the living room window I watch Shane’s arms move as he throws buckets of water over the Cortina. Every week his skin’s browner.

Shane doesn’t talk to me. If I walk out there, he looks at the ground. His black curly hair hangs over his face. His fat lower lip moves as if he’s chewing the cud.