He registers my confusion, my frustration. I’m so close now and he’s speaking in riddles – Spit it out, spit it out! – and he says, ‘How much do you know about that night, then? From your digging. What did you find?’

I shuffle my feet and sense my hands flare out from my hips, subconsciously making myself bigger. ‘I know it was her last performance before she was supposed to leave for Nashville. She and Mary Anne argued. Then you and Archie left with Mary Anne, supposedly to take Mary Anne home, but presumably to follow Roxy.’

Booker settles into the story. ‘The most unusual energy that night. Everyone could sense it. Mary Anne and Roxy were going at it outside – no one knows what about, mind you. Then she talks to Archie, all in tears, saying that Roxy had said something unspeakable.’ Booker collects himself here. ‘She whispered whatever it was to Archie, and he was livid. I couldn’t believe it. I’d never seen him like that in my life.’

‘What did Roxy say to her?’

‘I tried asking him about it later but he wouldn’t say. So Mary Anne wants to go home. Fine. I’m out of it, I’ve had enough, I go with the both of them. Not to follow her – to take Mary home.

‘Archie’s got a nasty case of road rage, mad as hell, but I’d never seen him hurt a fly. He was truly set off by this in a way I didn’t understand.’

‘Then what happened? You followed her. What happened?’

‘So we find Roxy near the edge of the woods and she’s about to walk in, but as soon as she catches sight of us, she looks like she’s seen a ghost. Damn near bolts into the trees.’

He pauses, like I’m supposed to ask something.

‘And I will have you know Roxy wasn’t scared of anything.’ He swipes the air with his hands. ‘Nothing. Wouldn’t run from a bull coming after her. And that night, for whatever reason, she was scared of us.

‘Archie gets out, chasing her, Mary’s behind telling him to stop, and I don’t know what else to do so I follow. We run for – shit, I don’t even know how long, and we’re running and I don’t even know why we’re running and Archie’s calling “Stop, stop”, and then Roxy does. Stops, I mean. But it doesn’t look like it’s cos she’s tired. It’s like she just gives up. Right? Turns round.

‘Then she gets this really evil look in her eye and says something I will never forget for the rest of my life. She goes, “You want to shoot me, don’t you?” I remember that clear as day. Because it was so sudden, such a strange thing to say. “You want to shoot me, don’t you?”