Walking back in the lamp-stained dark, the duckboards greasy and glittering with frost, she wanted to sing, she wanted to scream, she wanted to make love to him, she wanted to die.

And then came Mrs Fletcher, snapping her scissors, the soft scrunch of the blades through thick hanks, the gradual sensation of lightness. Now every scrap of hair that Powell had touched was gone.

He frowned, pulled her roughly against him. She could feel the tickle of his chest hair against her cheek and his bristles on top of her head. She could feel the outraged beating of his heart.

Iris kissing the lips of a dying boy. Imagine! So very kind, so killingly funny! Cross-eyed Iris in her specs, whatever did the poor boy think?