Just as I did when I was a teenager, I left my bike unlocked outside ECM’s house, entered the back door, shouted a hello to ECM’s mother, then climbed the pale wooden ladder up to ECM’s bedroom. There we chatted, lounging on the raffia carpet that was littered with craft materials.

Soon after my arrival, ECM made a shocking revelation. In the 1990s she spent nearly all the money left to her by her father by paying off the drug debts of my sister S. It crossed my mind that ECM was hopeful that she’d finally see the repayment of this huge sum now that S was about to come into her own inheritance. A big issue, however, was that S had always overestimated the amount of money that would eventually come her way. S owed ECM almost £1M; her inheritance would be less than a tenth of this amount.

The other bad news was that vandals set fire to my bike while I was indoors with ECM.