So, Agnes hadn’t told him he was the star of her little show? Tch, tch. Shocking omission. Well, there’s no such thing as a free shag, Justin, my boy. There’s a lesson for you, for next time.

Justin raised his head to look back through the heavy plate glass. Everywhere he looked, his own image stared back, twice as large as life, mocking him.

It’s not me, he felt like shouting. That person isn’t me. The need to rid himself of the person in the photographs, to destroy the hideous, pitiable figure in the beautiful grey coat, took him over until there was nothing left but rage. And so as it began to rain, big icy drops that turned the grimy road slick with mud, he peeled off the precious garment and hurled it as hard as he could. It landed flat and heavy under a steady stream of traffic and sleet.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said to Boy, and began to run, head ducked, his brother’s Christmas present pressed to his chest, shirt collar pulled up against the rain. If he’d waited another few seconds, he might have seen Ivan dive into the traffic after his coat with a furious oath. He might have heard the skid and screech of tyres and seen the stormy oblivious world close over the man one last time, seen the sodden coat and its maker become indistinguishable from roadkill.

But Justin’s head was down and it was dark. It was all he could do to keep upright against the driving needles of freezing rain. Which is how he came to collide with a middle-aged woman walking towards him on the pavement. Her head and neck were stiff and painful and she walked quickly, eyes downcast, anxious to be home in bed. The rain stung her face and ran down into her eyes, a tiny percentage pooling and mixing with fluids contained in the conjunctiva.

In the exact moment of the glancing impact of Justin’s body against her own, she blinked, and momentum caused a drop of fluid from the mucous membrane surrounding her eye to traverse the few inches into Justin’s slightly open mouth. It was the sort of event that happens a thousand times a day – on trains, in lifts, wherever strangers in close proximity cough or sneeze or shake hands.

In its entirety, the encounter lasted about two seconds.

Justin, soaked and freezing, regained his balance, mumbled an apology and continued to run. At Peter’s house, he towelled off his dog, threw a blanket on the floor, placed his brother’s gift on the radiator to dry, stripped off his own clothes, ran a hot bath and lay in it until his bones thawed, his fingertips accordioned into whitish folds, and the water began to cool. Then he dried himself and crawled into bed beneath a pile of quilts, his steaming body warming the cold sheets.

Peter and Dorothea arrived home soon afterwards, and Justin could hear them at the doorway to the bedroom, whispering. They waited for a sign that he wanted company, but he gave none, and eventually the whispering ceased.

The next time Justin woke up he could hear Peter’s calm regular breathing across the room, and the dial of his watch glowed 2 a.m. He lay awake then, disturbed by images of disembodied limbs and torsos riddled with shrapnel, legs with no feet, fingerless hands.

The memory of Agnes’s photographs sickened him.

He came down the next morning thick-headed and depressed, and found Dorothea and Anna already awake, feeding the cats and talking about Agnes. He asked Dorothea, cautiously, what she thought of the show.

‘It’s very clever in some ways,’ she answered coolly. ‘And the photographs of you are beautiful, even when you look your worst. Most people won’t care that it’s all very horrible as well. They’ll just think it’s new and different and terribly original.’ Dorothea’s eyes were unsentimental. ‘I’m not wild about her angle on friendship, if that’s your question. She’s treated you very badly indeed.’

And that was that. The next minute she was making him a cup of tea and describing a snow leopard documentary she and Anna had seen on TV.

Dorothea’s appraisal of Agnes was a revelation. She was so definitive and matter-of-fact that Justin felt the terrible shame inside him begin to dissipate. Agnes’s power was flawed, so flawed that an eleven-year-old could defy it.

Peter came into the kitchen. ‘Have you seen the paper today?’

Later that day Justin thought back on their conversation and wondered whether the things that kill you were not just the crashes and explosions from without, but the bombs buried deep inside, the bombs ticking quietly in your bowel or your liver or your heart, year after year, that you yourself had swallowed, or absorbed, and allowed to grow.