It had been almost a whole year since he’d gone with his mum to visit John; after the last time, she’d left him at home, letting him stay at Jake’s for the day if she had to go at the weekend. If she went on a school day then she’d drop him off and tell him not to leave the school playground at home time unless she was there to collect him. He didn’t know why she’d stopped him going to visit. In one way he’d been glad, in another he’d been angry that he wasn’t allowed to go. He was older now; he didn’t feel as frightened. In fact, he was more intrigued and had so many questions he wanted to ask both her and John. He wanted to know why she had taken him there in the first place. He wondered if it was just because she didn’t want to leave him on his own. It was only the two of them, and it was only in the previous year that she’d decided he could stay with Jake.

Twice he’d waved her off at the school gates and pretended to go inside. He’d sneaked straight back out as soon as she’d turned her back, before Mrs Bates, the deputy head, caught him, and headed in the direction of the train station. He hated school and the thought of having the house to himself all day made the risk of getting caught truanting worth it. He didn’t care if the head teacher, Mr Hart, gave him lines or detention – there were worse things.

Today was the anniversary of his aunt Linda’s death and his mum had been weeping and wailing, telling him how poignant it was that a visiting order should have come through for today. He still didn’t understand what was going on, but he knew it was something very wrong. His mum hadn’t left him at the school gates like she usually did. She was standing there dabbing her eyes with a crumpled tissue and waving to him. He’d had no choice but to run up the steps into the school, then he carried on running until he reached the other door at the opposite end of the school that was always open for the kids who were late. Making sure there were no teachers skulking around, he’d run out of the door and across the playground, which bordered the wooded grassy yard of St Cuthbert’s church. Climbing over the fence, he’d slipped and landed heavily on the other side, winding himself. Unable to move, he’d lain there with his legs drawn up to his chest as he tried to heave in large mouthfuls of air. When he’d recovered he looked around – the playground was empty and the loud peal of the school bell echoed in his head. He stood up slowly; there was no need to rush now. He could take his time and go back home. He’d left the dining-room window unlatched. The old sash windows were rotten and the wind howled through them on a cold day, but they were great for getting in and out of the house unnoticed.

He reached his house in less than five minutes – it was handy if he was ever late in the morning because he didn’t have far to go to get to school. He walked through the open gate and went around to the rear of the house, hoping that his mum hadn’t decided to come back for anything. Pushing the dining-room window up, he jumped inside. The house still smelt of fried bacon grease from earlier. He went into the kitchen, then checked the rest of the house. The coast was clear – his mum was nowhere to be seen. She’d be sitting on the draughty station platform waiting for the train to come so she could go and visit John.

He got a drink of orange juice, then went upstairs to his bedroom. He would lie on the bed and wait for a while. Make sure she definitely wasn’t coming back before he went into her office. If she ever caught him in there he didn’t know what she would do. She didn’t smack him often, only the occasional clip around the ear if he was being cheeky. She never gave him a full-on, pull-his-pants-down whack, slapping his backside with a slipper or a shoe. Only one person had ever done that to him and she was dead.

He couldn’t even remember why his Aunty Linda had decided he deserved a good hiding. It must have been something bad. He did remember his mum rushing in at the sound of his howls and dragging him off Linda’s knees. It was the only time he’d ever seen his mum properly angry: as she’d run at Linda and slapped her across the face. The red-and-white handprint had stayed on her cheek for ages and he’d laughed. That night two years ago Linda had gone out to meet her friends and never come home. He’d wondered if it had been his fault that she’d died, then he’d wondered if his mum blamed herself or him. It didn’t really matter who blamed who – she was dead and not coming back. He supposed it didn’t matter whose fault it was either; it didn’t change anything.

He hadn’t realised how tired he was until he opened his eyes and wondered where he was. It took him several moments to understand that he wasn’t propped up on his elbows at the back of the history class. He blinked, felt the rough candlewick bedspread beneath him, and sat up. He looked at his watch: he’d been asleep for almost an hour. How had that happened? He got up, went for a pee, then crossed the narrow hallway to the spare room that his mum had converted into an office. The ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign screamed at him from the door handle, but he didn’t care. He’d never been anywhere so mesmerising in his life. He turned the handle, wondering if she’d locked it; it went all the way down and he sighed. If she’d managed to lock it he’d have had to do a better job of breaking in. She had warned him several times he mustn’t go inside and he’d promised faithfully that he wouldn’t.

He’d kept that promise until a few weeks ago, when she’d had to rush out for a hospital appointment and hadn’t shut the door properly behind her. Before then he’d never really thought much about what she did in there. It was her office where she did her paperwork, wrote her books and filed her bills. There couldn’t be anything of interest in there to an eleven-year-old boy, could there? How wrong he’d been. As he’d walked past and seen the open door, he’d decided to take a peek. She’d never know he’d been in and he would go straight back out afterwards and shut the door behind him.

As he’d stepped inside he’d felt his stomach churn – he’d known he shouldn’t be in here. His eyes had scanned the small room; there was a battered old pine dressing table that was covered in pieces of paper and reporter’s notepads. A word processor, like the one the school secretary had in the office, sat on the table that served as a desk. It had been the huge corkboard that had drawn his attention and he’d felt himself stepping closer to it, his eyes wide with horror. It was full of black-and-white photographs of naked women. All of them were posed in the most vulgar way, legs spread wide open. He could see everything. Some of them had blindfolds on and others had gags in their mouths, their hands tied together in front of them. All of them had ropes around their necks; all of them looked dead.

He’d felt a prickle of excitement begin to rush through his veins as he’d craned his neck forwards, trying to make sense of what exactly he was looking at. He’d stayed that way until he heard the front door slam, jerking him out of the trance he was in. He’d turned and run from the room, closing the door, and gone into his own bedroom where he’d thrown himself onto the bed and pretended to be asleep. He couldn’t talk; he had so many questions. He needed to know what had happened to those women. Why they were naked? Why did his mum have their pictures? Why had he felt nothing but a rush of pure adrenaline whilst staring at them? He’d known it wasn’t right, that he probably should have felt sick and not looked at them for a second longer than when he’d first laid his eyes on them. But he hadn’t – the images were ingrained into his mind and now they were all he thought about, all day and every night.

Here he was once more, sitting in the office chair and staring at the women on the board. All of them had similar hair: long and dark. Parted in the middle in the same style. Whoever had hurt these women liked them all to look the same. Of course, if you studied their faces they didn’t look anything alike, but from a distance and at first glance they did. Underneath each one was a first name – Carrie, Joanna… His Aunt Linda’s photograph was on there. It was covered with a yellow Post-it note and he carefully peeled it back to see her dead, naked body, her eyes staring back at him.

There were three different women. He reached out and stroked the photos as if he could touch their cold, dead bodies. He liked them all, but he decided that Carrie was his favourite. She was much prettier than the others, even though she was dead. He would never have killed her if it had been up to him. He would have taken Carrie away and kept her all to himself, locked away in a special room where he could go in and see her whenever he wanted.