I ran up the stairs to the half-way landing, out of sight. The door opened and I heard footsteps. Pippa’s voice and someone else’s, a man’s. What was wrong with her? ‘Straight in here,’ she said, leading him into her room. ‘You want a drink? I’ll bring something up.’

I waited until she returned. I heard the clink of glasses and her door closing. I sat on the upper stairs in half-darkness. I could see the old patterned wallpaper, peeling away and showing the plaster underneath but I couldn’t make out its colour. After a few minutes I heard murmuring sounds from Pippa’s room. If I acted quickly, I should be safe. I padded back upstairs. As I stood in my room, the risks of what I was attempting became clear to me for the first time. There were six – no, seven – other people in the house. They often stayed up late, left their rooms for a drink, a bath or a piss. It would take just one. I only needed a clear couple of minutes, but would God give them to me? I hoisted Peggy over my shoulder, walked out of the room and down the stairs, feeling every creak run through my body.

I hadn’t even thought of what I would find out on the street. I eased the front door open and edged outside, hidden in the shadows of the porch. There was nobody. Twenty paces and I would be free. I stepped on to the pavement as if I was walking on to a stage, a stage surrounded by dark windows. Someone could be standing behind any of them, looking out. I counted the paces. It took twenty-seven and I reached her door. I walked down the steps to where the bins were and let her slip gently on to the cement. I pulled her behind the bins and covered her with bags of garbage. She might not be found for days.

Chapter Thirty-two

When I was still at school and went by the name of David, not Davy, teachers treated me as if I was stupid. My English teacher, who was tall, flat-chested and in love with dead writers, said I lacked imagination and my creative writing was plodding. My French teacher didn’t even know who I was. I was one of the people at the back of the class, not noticed. My science teacher called me ‘conscientious’, my Design and Technology teacher called me ‘competent’, and my maths teacher said I was ‘an average student’. Well, I wasn’t average now, not average at all. I was one in a million.

It took me a time to get the hang of it. That night I hardly slept, and when I did I had strange, crowded dreams. My entire body felt unnaturally alert and vibrant: every creak or rustle made me start. I listened to footsteps on the road outside and waited, skin prickling, to hear if they would stop at our door. I couldn’t tell if the feeling throbbing heavily inside me and pulsing behind my eyes was excitement or fear. I was awake at dawn, and ready for the day ahead, way before anyone else in the house, but I didn’t go downstairs for a long time. I stood in front of the mirror in a clean blue shirt and jeans, and patted aftershave on my cheeks, practising my modest, boyish smile. I sat on the bed with my hands on my knees and my back quite straight, and breathed in and out, in and out. I heard Astrid in the room beneath get up and use the bathroom, then go downstairs. Very faintly, I heard sounds of voices from the kitchen: hers, Pippa’s, someone else’s, presumably the man Pippa was with last night. I got up and positioned myself beside the window so that I saw Astrid leave. Although she was limping slightly and I could see even from the top floor that her face was bruised, she still had that light-footed gait and held her head high. She walked down the street. She reached Peggy’s house. She didn’t hesitate but went on by.

I stayed where I was. The postman was coming up the road, very slowly, stopping at each door. I held my breath and watched as he fumbled in his mailbag, pulled out a couple of envelopes, then pushed open the gate to number fifty-four. Past the rubbish bins, scratching his head in the warmth, pushing the letters through the letterbox, out onto the road again. I saw him yawn and felt a smile spread across my face. I had to stop myself snorting out loud: he’d been just a few inches from her body and seen nothing, smelled nothing, noticed nothing. Next door, Mick coughed, groaned. The walls were too thin in that house.

I don’t usually like breakfast, but that morning I was hungry. Pippa and a tall man with a bony face were in the kitchen when I came downstairs. He was dressed in a smart suit and was fiddling neurotically with his tie, repeatedly pulling the knot tight, then loosening it. Married, I thought. Married and feeling furtive; he was more nervous than I was. Pippa looked as though she’d slept like a baby for hours. She was wearing a grey suit whose skirt finished just above her knees, a white shirt with one button too many undone so I could see the frilly top of her bra, and her hair was coiled on top of her head, with artful stray locks framing her face. She gave me a bright smile from her painted lips and introduced me to the man, who turned out to be Jeff and on his way out.

‘It was a bit rowdy during the night, wasn’t it?’ I said, to test them, but Pippa didn’t react and Jeff blushed scarlet; he must have thought I was referring to them. I found half a packet of bacon in the fridge, and a couple of eggs left in the carton, past their sell-by date, so I made myself a fry-up, with baked beans as well, and fried bread, plus a big cup of milky coffee. It was the best breakfast I’d ever had and by the time I was half-way through, Mick was downstairs and Owen too, looking dishevelled and unshaven, but in a deliberate, self-conscious sort of way. Nobody said much but, then, they never do in the morning. I could tell that not one of them was suspicious and I wanted to say something to shake them out of their smug complacency.

When I left for work, I walked past number fifty-four as slowly as I could, glancing across at the bins. It was frustrating to think that I wouldn’t be around when she was discovered, and when I got to the end of the road I turned and went back to the house again, as if I’d left something behind, so that I could once more pass the hidden body. All day long, the secret of her tingled in me and I left work early, excited as any lover. Until Peggy was discovered, it was like writing a letter that might change your life but not posting it.

At half past five, I got off the bus at the end of our road and it was then I saw the dustmen and stopped dead in my tracks, my heart swelling in my chest, my mouth dry, the road seeming to shrink, then expand in front of my eyes. There were two of them on the pavement, hauling bins and fitting them to the back of the vehicle, which the third was driving. They had only got to number twenty-eight. In the heat of the day, you could smell the rubbish. I would never do that job. You’d have to be desperate to deal with rotten meat and babies’ nappies. They seemed cheerful enough. One was whistling.

I stayed where I was and lit a cigarette. I don’t usually smoke when I’m alone, just offer fags to other people, but this seemed like a special occasion and I needed to do something with my hands. When the refuse collectors got to number fifty-two, I started to walk slowly along the road again, until I was near enough to make out what was happening. Then I halted, and pretended to tie up my shoelace. Number fifty-four. This was it. Two bins, one green for the recycled stuff and one blue for ordinary rubbish, were pulled out on to the pavement and hoisted up on to the dustcart. A few bits of paper spilled on to the tarmac, and an empty shampoo bottle. Nobody shouted or cried out. A group of youths swaggered past.

One of the men turned back to collect the bags of garbage that I’d pulled into place last night. He put both hands round the neck of a bag and hoisted it up on his shoulder. It was almost comical. He stopped, stared for a long time, then called his workmate over, gesturing. I could see one of Peggy’s legs now, and then the figure of the driver swinging from his seat. There was shouting and commotion.