She’d switched the headlights on and started driving. ‘Better stop your smirking,’ she’d said, ‘or it’s going to be a bumpy ride.’

*

On Streatham Vale, the shops had CLOSED signs hung askew. Bakeries and butcher’s had their awnings wound in for the night. Chemist’s had their blinds pulled down. The greengrocers had taken in their sandwich boards; the hairdressers had left them folded in their doorways. There were fellas out on bicycles, scarves flapping on the breeze. Couples walking arm in arm along the pavements with their collars up, hats on, their exhalations steaming. From the junctions, rows of terraced houses branched off, decked with loose net curtains barely thick enough to blot the shadows of the folk inside. Christmas trees in every downstairs window, done up nice with garlands of red ribbon or white snowflakes cut from paper. It didn’t feel like London but it was – the dull crust some would cut through just to reach the softer parts.

At the next parade of shops, she saw it – G. G. Wilson’s, on the corner – and it seemed to hum with light. The paving stones outside looked buttery and warm. She drove straight past, but slowed. A little further up, she steered into a side road, parking where a street lamp wasn’t working. She tied her headscarf tightly, gave herself a quiet sermon in the rear-view mirror, breathed. Stepping out, she heard the dull beat of the same announcer’s voice on radios up and down the street. She didn’t pass a single person on her way.

Wilson’s had a side door, not a back door – that made two things Mal was wrong about so far. She didn’t cross the road and walk right up to it. She reasoned it was better to stay on the pavement opposite, make a left, then cross. It was too dark now to read her watch. She looped back to the shop. If she was late, it wasn’t by enough to rile anyone. She knocked and, while she waited on the street, she eyed the shop’s display. So many standing lamps with frilly shades. Desk lamps, table lamps, old-fashioned, modern. Spindly craning arms and glassy hoods. Wall lights gleaming in a hundred different ways. There was an ugly fixture near the front – a gold sconce, holding two fake candles with electric bulbs. Of all the things to see. Aunt Helen had these on her landing, where the sacred photos of dead Uncle Sid were hung. She had to look away.

Footsteps neared. A lock was turned. The door swung open and a red-haired fella in a grubby topcoat stared at her. ‘You’re Joyce, then, are you?’

‘Mr Wilson?’

The fella shook his head. ‘In here.’

He led her through the hall, which stank of rising damp. The woodchip was unpainted and it curled above the skirting boards. There was a staircase, heading nowhere that she hoped to be. As the fella paced ahead of her, she noticed that he had a hammer in his hand, the lightweight kind you use to put up pictures, stubby at one end. They approached a door which said STAFF ONLY on the architrave. The red-haired fella went inside and held it open for her.