“I wouldn’t know how. Let’s walk around and see if anything suggests itself.”

When Roy kept his seat I thought he was being adolescently stubborn until I saw him consult his phone. “There’s a police station,” he said, only for his eagerness to flag. “It’s shut.”

“Let’s get a sense of the area, then. That’s all we can do.”

Roy confined his disagreement to a grimace as he left the car. I’d parked alongside the first cottage, where an old lady straightened up beyond the low hedge to fix us with a look. Her skin was on the way to growing as white as her hair. Green rubber gloves flapped around her elbows as she brandished a polystyrene carton she’d retrieved from a flowerbed. Once she decided that we weren’t the culprits or potential malefactors she dropped the squeaky carton in a black bag and stooped with a disgusted grunt to collect more litter.

Characters like a giant child’s stencilling identified the nearest tower block as BLOCK FIVE. Twenty storeys of communal balconies led up to the presumably flat roof, the kind from which my aunt had fallen, but I saw no way to establish whether this was the one. I was about to suggest moving on when Roy said “What do you think, dad?”

Before I could reply, someone else spoke. “Is he proposing to live there?”

I assumed the old lady meant Roy. “Not at his age.”

“Not at any, I would hope.” She was at the hedge, frowning to fend off a wince as she extracted an abandoned plastic wrapper from among the thorns. “You don’t want him falling in with the wrong element,” she said.

“I’m picky with my friends,” Roy wanted her to know.

“You won’t find many of the right kind here any more,” the woman said, still to me. “Not since they built this soulless place around us.”

“We aren’t looking for accommodation,” I assured her.

“Then may I ask what you are looking for?”

“Where my dad’s aunt died. She fell off one of those,” Roy said, jerking his head at the tower block. “Thelma Turnbill.”

“He doesn’t hold back, does he?” It was unclear whether the woman meant this as praise. “Were you even at school then?” she asked him.

“Nearly, and anyway it doesn’t matter. My dad’s her nephew.”

“I’d gathered as much, thank you. I still don’t understand why you’re here.”

“We’re going where she did.”

“I sincerely hope not,” the woman said and turned on me. “What does the boy mean?”

“My aunt was an artist. We’re researching her life.” This felt like a bid to explain our behaviour to myself. “Visiting places she found significant,” I said.

“Significant.” After a pause that an examination of the word apparently required, the woman said “I suppose you could put it that way.”

“He just did.”