I saw them both stop then and look around the plot. And once they were reassured that the mysterious rough sleeper wasn’t about to jump out at them, they sat down and built themselves a zoot.

I was close to ‘Clive’s’ bedroom window in my little hidden corner. I glanced up at the muted light seeping from his curtains and wondered what he was doing in there. Poor old Clive and his nylon counterpane.

The smell of draw reached me a minute later. Their voices drifted slowly across with their exhaled smoke. ‘Things are going to be different this year.’

I couldn’t tell which boy was speaking; they both sounded the same to me.

‘Oh yeah. You mean …?’

‘Yeah. The mask’s coming off.’

One of them laughed. Then the other one joined in.

‘No more Mr Nice Guy?’

‘No more Mr Nice Guy. Fuck that. Fuck it hard.’

More laughter.

‘This time next year.’

‘Yeah, this time next year.’

‘Maybe we’ll be famous.’

‘Infamous.’

‘Yeah …’

More fireworks obliterated the rest of that particular conversation.

After a few minutes they packed their stuff away and got to their feet.

‘No fox tonight?’ said one of them.

‘Probably scared by the fireworks,’ said the other.

They both paused and looked down at my little pile of possessions. ‘I wonder if the homeless girl will turn up.’

‘Maybe she’s already here.’

‘Ooooh, scary!’

‘Shall we leave her something?’

‘Like what?’

‘I dunno. The rest of this champagne?’

I noticed for the first time that one of them was holding a bottle by the neck.

‘Yeah. Why not, I don’t want it.’

They planted the bottle carefully on the ground by my things. Then one of them said, ‘Happy New Year, homeless girl.’

And then the other one said, ‘Hope your year gets better, homeless girl.’

And then they disappeared again.

I watched them part ways on the street outside. I saw Joshua walk slowly across the street to his house and his equally lanky friend walk the other way, down the hill.

And then the fireworks stopped; the sky cleared; it fell silent. I took off my trainers and put on the big fluffy socks I’d packed. I tucked myself inside my sleeping bag. I sniffed the rim of the half-drunk bottle of champagne and thought better of it. I switched on my phone and replied to some messages, including one from Aaron saying he was on his way home and he’d see me in the morning. I stared up at the sky, the fresh 2019 sky. Black, new, unwritten-on.

38

Cate goes to see her house in Kilburn on Sunday. She doesn’t like going during the week when the builders are there and she gets in the way and they look at her curiously as if she has somehow caught them in the act of doing something bad.

It’s early when she leaves the flat; the children are still asleep and Roan is in bed, propped up on pillows with his laptop, catching up on some work. She decides to walk; it’ll take thirty minutes and it’s a pleasant morning. She crosses the street and peers into the empty plot through the foliage. You would never know, she thinks to herself, you would never know about the detectives and the police cars and the helicopters; it was as if none of it had ever happened. Then she walks past Owen Pick’s house, not avoiding it for once. All is quiet. Curtains are drawn. The morning has only just come.

In her empty house in Kilburn, she can see her breath. Her footsteps ring off the bare floorboards; carpets will be coming, tiles will be coming, curtains and furniture and wallpaper and cushions will be coming. The bare bones are in place now and she can almost picture it as her home again. She stares from the window on the mezzanine level, out into their wrecked back garden. It’s full of bags of cement and lengths of wood and the grass is obliterated by builders’ debris. She pictures herself out there, in a few months’ time: it will be high summer, the sky will be acid blue, they will have some nice new garden furniture – she’s already picked out the things she wants from the Ikea catalogue – and maybe there will be a barbecue going. She will no longer have to see Owen Pick’s house every time she leaves her front door. No longer have to pass by the scary empty plot with its screaming foxes.

She inhales deeply and holds on to the quiet thrill that passes through her, the anticipation of it all. She passes up the staircase to the room that is very near to being her bedroom again; it overlooks the street, out towards a row of unthreatening terraced houses, just like hers. No sinister empty spaces, no ancient, creaking trees throwing shadows across her bed, no sex pests lurking behind heavy doors and grubby curtains. Just normal houses filled with normal people. She will never take Kilburn for granted again.

She takes some photos of the progress for Roan to look at later and then she locks the door behind her, lays the palm of her hand briefly, affectionately, against the outside wall of the house and heads back to the flat.

Roan is in the kitchen making toast when she gets in.

He says, ‘Want some? I can put another slice in?’

She says, ‘No, thank you, I had breakfast already.’

He looks strangely perky, she thinks. Upbeat. ‘Have you seen that?’ he says, pointing at the screen of his laptop. She touches it and she sees the BBC home page. The headline says: ‘College Lecturer Arrested for the Abduction of Saffyre Maddox’.

‘Oh my God,’ she says. ‘They’ve arrested him!’

‘I know,’ says Roan. ‘I’m so relieved.’

She glances up from the screen. ‘Relieved?’ It strikes her as a strange choice of word.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Now maybe we’ll find out where she is.’

She drops her eyes again and reads the story.

Thirty-three-year-old former college lecturer, Owen Pick, has been formally arrested and is being held at Kentish Town police station charged with the abduction of missing teenager, Saffyre Maddox. Miss Maddox, 17 years old, was last seen ten days ago on Valentine’s night heading into Hampstead village after telling family she was going to meet a friend. Police sources say that Pick, who is unmarried and lives with his aunt in her flat in Hampstead, has provided no explanation for blood traces found at his property. He has also been found to be active on a number of what are known as ‘incel forums’, internet websites where men who identify as ‘involuntary celibates’, unable to form sexual relationships with women despite a desire to do so, come together to share their frustrations. It is theorised that the abduction of Saffyre Maddox might have been the result of the online radicalisation of Pick by other forum users. Many recent mass shootings in the USA have been attributed to the influence of radical elements on such sites.

Pick’s family have been unavailable for comment. It is believed that his bail has been set at one million pounds.

‘Incel forums?’ says Cate, her stomach churning at the concept. She’d seen a documentary about incels once that had chilled her to her core. The hatred and the bile and the bitterness. ‘Christ.’

‘I know,’ says Roan. ‘Kind of adds up though, doesn’t it? When you look at him, when you see where he lives. I mean, you can tell, just by looking at him, that no one gives a shit about him.’

‘Have you ever treated a patient like that?’ she asks a moment later. ‘You know, someone who hates girls because girls don’t like them?’

‘God yes,’ says Roan. ‘Little boys who will totally grow up to be on incel forums talking about the best way to rape women. I certainly have. I had an eleven-year-old boy once, a few years ago; he’d been caught at school writing elaborate and very violent rape fantasies.’

Cate shakes her head, slowly, wondering not for the first time about the gruelling nature of her husband’s job. ‘Doesn’t it ever, just, you know, get to you? Dealing with kids like that?’

He stops buttering his toast and turns to look at Cate. ‘Of course it does,’ he says. ‘Christ. Of course it does.’

It’s the Sunday before the children go back to school after the February half-term, which means that Georgia will spend the whole day in her pyjamas angrily finishing her homework, shouting at junctures about how much she hates school and hates exams and hates Cate for making her go to school and hates the government for making her go to school and hates life and hates everybody and doesn’t care about her GCSEs anyway. Until finally the homework will be done and she will make herself something sugary to eat and have it in front of the television which she will feel she has totally worked for and deserved and enjoy all the more for it. It will be a high drama day, a draining day and Cate is ready for it from the moment she hears Georgia’s bedroom door opening at eleven thirty that morning.

‘Hello, angel.’

‘Urgh,’ says Georgia. ‘I woke up at, like, eight o’clock or something and I couldn’t get back to sleep.’

‘Well,’ says Cate, ‘I came in and looked at you at about ten thirty and you were out cold.’

‘Yeah, well, I was kind of drifting in and out.’

‘Want something to eat?’