There’s a clutch of people gathered at the wire fence. I’m not sure why they are here but I’m sure they have a reason. We all have a history, don’t we? Tonight, a party has been planned in one of the local pubs. The community will celebrate the demolition of the site that attracts the true-crime ghouls. The demolition of their guilt that Simon was one of their own.

It is time.

Archie scrambles into the front of the car, dragging his rucksack behind him. He settles himself on George’s lap and unzips his bag.

Carefully he unpacks his bright plastic toys: Scoop, Muck, Dizzy, Roley and Lofty, lining the construction vehicles from Bob the Builder on the dashboard.

‘Are you ready?’ he asks them sweetly. ‘Those big machines out there are going to flatten this site.’ He claps his hands excitedly, making me jump. ‘And then they’re going to build some houses. The soldiers don’t need this place any more, do they, Mummy?’

‘No, Archie. No one needs it.’

The wrecking ball begins to swing.

‘Can you see, Dizzy?’ Archie asks his orange cement mixer, leaning forward to listen for the answer. ‘He says he can see.’

I can see.

I can see three young girls kicking and screaming as they are carried inside. I can see a filthy room where the girls sang and danced, watched over by a clown with a shock of orange hair. I can see three sisters huddled together on a mattress, promising to always be there for each other.

I can see it all.

‘I’ll be back soon.’ My eyes find George’s and I shake my head before he asks. No, I don’t want him to come with me.

‘Do you want your gloves? It’s freezing outside?’ He lifts them from the centre console.

‘No.’ I don’t want my gloves today, or any day. Now, I like to feel.

Outside the car, the noise and the vibrations from the wrecking ball are immense. The main building is almost rubble, the NORCROFT ARMY CAMP sign hidden under a cloud of dust. As I pass behind the soldier, I reach out a hand and squeeze his shoulder, wondering if in his mind he’s back in that ballroom – a blue-eyed boy with cropped blond hair, hovering by the refreshment table and summoning up the courage to ask a girl to dance while Vera Lynn sings ‘We’ll Meet Again’, just the way Carly had described.

There’s no one around the side of the base. The site is so vast it could be days, weeks even before the machines trek where tanks had once trundled. I link my fingers through the chain fence as I stare at the decontamination chamber, not caring who might have touched the metal before me, the germs I might be picking up. My stomach twists as I remember Carly bundling Marie and I inside those lockers I had thought were for rucksacks but later found out were for bodies. I remember her sending us down the chute, through the tunnel. Marie weak and sick, me with my swollen, twisted ankle. So many times Carly could have left us, but she didn’t.