Growing up, I saw Princess Diana a lot. In newspapers, on TV, smiling from photo frames. Suspended, headless, in the centre of porcelain plates on plastic stands never intended for use.

Noelle had promised she would write. She was different when she said it. She was the straight-backed, empty-eyed Noelle I’d come to loathe in our last weeks together.

A scruffy valley of fields lay behind me. I had lost my path and stumbled along amongst the cabbages for the better part of the day. Before me I found an impenetrable snarl of shrubbery. Then, surprisingly close, the clang and grind of a heavy metal lid being moved.

The Headmaster scolded him for burning and biting his skin, and all he could do was apologize to his stepmother.

On the Thursday Bowman and Carmen had a party, they ordered Sukhothai and Bowman made a playlist for the occasion.

With his throat the scene of an alien autopsy and anxiety washing over him in waves, James thought about the work he had to do to get another job and fund existence in an area once called the murder capital of Western Europe.

From the upstairs window, I see him appear. The young boy – running on legs as thin as matchsticks – comes into view at the end of the street.

Suggi watched crows pick at a dying dog’s flesh. One pulled at the skin to stretch it while another pecked to cut. The dog’s guts spilled. Blood oozed. Nerves and clots pulsed outside Suggi’s cage.

“Mom, how did you actually meet dad?” I ask. She glances through the family photo album in my hands. “Margo, I’ve already told you. I nearly drowned in my three-day swim and he was the lifeguard who saved me,” she says. She smiles, save for her worried eyes.