He headed for the front door and found Charlie in the hall, balancing a small plastic hippo on the edge of a porcelain umbrella stand. Charlie looked up at his brother, startled, and dropped the animal into the abyss.

‘Never mind.’ Justin reached into the deep cylinder and felt around for the toy, bringing it up with a handful of others. ‘There’s your hippo,’ he said, placing it in his brother’s outstretched hand. ‘And a zebra, lion, goat, giraffe, cow. Why don’t you play somewhere else? There’s a whole lost animal kingdom down there.’

I’m not playing, Charlie said, dropping the animals back down the umbrella stand one by one. I’m thinking about falling.

Justin shook his head. Young children seemed unable to grasp the simplest principles. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, ruffling the child’s hair. And opening the door, he set off down the road.

For the practicalities of his transformation he had chosen a nearby charity shop. Inside were thousands of cast-offs from other lives; surely one of them would fit.

He walked the short distance to the shop feeling guilty and somewhat suspect, like a spy. The feeling was good. He had a mission.

Inside he hesitated, running his eyes over the racks of dowdy blouses, last decade’s dresses and scuffed shoes. The woman at the till, pinch-faced and scowling, glared at him but said nothing. In her eyes, he was obviously a shiftless, thieving young person with nothing better to do with the last days of his summer holiday than defraud charity shops of their chipped and valueless merchandise.

He stared back at her, eyes hard and emptied of emotion. The name was Case. Justin Case. If he wanted to try on a shirt, he would try on a shirt.

In the far corner, he spied a rack of men’s clothing, crossed the floor to it and pulled out a shirt. He held it up under his chin. It smelled of something, something not entirely pleasant: stale cigarettes, burnt potatoes, coconut soap. The thought of adopting another person’s smell hadn’t occurred to him, made him faintly queasy. He closed his eyes, trying to expel the image from his brain.

A voice at his elbow nearly caused him to jump out of his skin. ‘Try this,’ the voice said. Its arm held out a dark brown and lavender paisley shirt.

Justin turned slowly. The voice belonged to a girl of perhaps nineteen, who peered at him through a heavy, clipped pink fringe. Her eyes were thickly rimmed with kohl; her mouth neatly outlined in a vivid shade of orange that clashed perfectly with her hair. She wore four-inch platform boots in pale green snakeskin, wildly patterned tights, a very short skirt, and a tight see-through shirt printed with Japanese cartoons over which was squeezed a 1950s-style long-line beige elastic bra. A camera bag hung from her shoulder.

Even Justin recognized that her dress sense was unusual. ‘Wow,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ she replied demurely. And then, ‘I’ve never seen you before.’ She tilted her head to one side, taking in his pale skin, lank hair and good cheekbones. The dark circles under his eyes.

Doomed youth, she thought. Interesting.

Justin looked alarmed. ‘What?’

‘I was just thinking. You could find some excellent things here if you knew what to look for.’

‘I know what I need.’

She waited.

‘Everything,’ he said at last. ‘Everything different in every way from this.’ He indicated himself.

‘Everything?’

‘Yes. I need a whole new identity.’

She smiled. ‘Have you killed someone?’

‘Not yet.’

The perfectly drawn orange mouth formed a tiny ‘o’.

Justin turned away. When he looked back, she was still staring at him.

‘You’re a potential killer?’

He sighed. ‘A potential kill-ee, more like.’

Her eyes narrowed. ‘Are you involved with drugs?’

‘No.’

‘Blackmail?’

‘No.’

‘Witness protection?’

‘No.’

‘Spooks?’

He shook his head. ‘No, nothing like that.’

‘Then what?’

Justin fidgeted, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, chewed his thumb. ‘I discovered my old self was doomed.’

‘Doomed?’

‘Doomed.’

‘In what sense, doomed?’

‘In the sense of standing poised on the brink of ruin with time running out.’

She stared.

‘Which is why I need to change everything, all of me. I can’t be recognized.’

The girl frowned. ‘But who do you think will recognize you?’

He dropped his voice. ‘Fate. My fate. David Case’s fate.’

‘Who’s David Case?’

‘Me. That is, I used to be him. Before I started changing everything.’

‘You’ve changed your name?’

He nodded.

‘So, you’re running away from fate,’ the girl said slowly, ‘and you think all this is going to make a difference?’

He shrugged. ‘What else can I do?’

‘Stop believing in fate?’

Justin sighed. ‘I wish I could.’

Neither of them said anything for a long time. The girl studied a chip in one of her nails.

‘Well,’ she said finally, with the smallest hint of a smile. ‘It’s different.’

He looked at her.

‘Not uninteresting,’ she added.

‘Not?’

‘No.’ She raised an eyebrow. ‘Not.’

She extended her hand. ‘My name is Agnes.’ The fingers she offered had pale green fingernails. ‘Agnes Bee.’

‘Justin. Justin Case.’

She blinked, digesting this information. And then all at once she beamed, her face illuminated with delight. He took the hand she offered. It was surprisingly soft and warm, and he held it cautiously, not sure when to let go. He had no experience of touching older women.

‘How very nice to meet you, Justin Case.’

Still smiling, Agnes turned to one of the racks and pulled out a shirt: poppy-coloured, long sleeves, ruffle down the front. She thrust it at Justin, along with the brown and lavender paisley.

‘Try these. I’ll keep looking.’

Justin looked at the shirts. ‘I don’t think so.’

She ignored him.

He sighed, took the hangers, and entered the tiny changing room at the far end of the shop. There was barely room to turn sideways.

The first shirt fitted. He buttoned it and looked around for a mirror.

Agnes swept the curtain aside and Justin found himself viewed in reverse close-up portrait through the wrong end of a Nikon 55mm DX lens. Click click click, click click click. Three frames per second. Two seconds. He leapt back with a startled squeak.

Agnes’s face emerged from one side of her Nikon. ‘What?’

‘What do you mean “what?” That.’

She frowned. ‘Turn around and let me look at you.’

He turned around and let her look at him.

‘Not bad.’ She beamed approval, then put the camera down and picked up a small pile of clothes. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on these things for ages. For exactly the right person.’

The thought of being exactly the right person appealed to Justin so completely that he tried everything she brought him and attempted to like it all. She brought him a turquoise flowered shirt, a skinny brown cardigan that he thought must have been designed for a woman, and a pair of white canvas trousers that had to be cinched with a belt. He put them all on and emerged from the cubicle, nervous.

Click click, click click click. Five shots aimed with deadly accuracy at his head. Agnes lowered her camera and considered him. ‘Excellent. You’ll take them all.’ She squinted, her head turned slightly to one side. ‘You’re very lucky I was here today.’

Justin nodded uncertainly.

‘Of course this is only the beginning.’ She spotted a red and white vinyl bowling bag and crossed briskly to pick it up. Justin watched her. He had no idea what she was talking about, but the feeling fitted with his new life as a stranger. There was even something reassuring about it.

Agnes carried the clothes to the till, accepted a small pile of creased £5 notes from Justin and handed them to the sour-faced woman. The money looked as if it had been crammed in a piggy bank for years, which it had. ‘That’s all he has,’ she told the scowling troll. ‘It’ll have to do.’

While the woman harrumphed and muttered irritably, Agnes flicked through her camera’s digital display.

She looked up and gazed solemnly at Justin. ‘You photograph like an angel, Justin Case.’

Was he being solicited for a child pornography website, or perhaps a fanzine article on fashion disasters?

‘Never mind. Next time I’ll bring proofs.’

‘I’ve enjoyed our first meeting immensely.’

He tried to smile, but it came out lopsided, uncertain. Click click click.

On the way out of the shop, Agnes spied a pair of pristine black jeans half-hidden under a pile of shirts. She stopped, examined them and tossed them to Justin.

‘Try them on.’

Agnes Bee waited outside the tiny changing room as he pulled them on. They fitted perfectly.

She swept back the curtain once more. ‘Could you scream?’ she asked happily.

Justin nodded. He thought he probably could.