Prologue

      ‘So, I says to him, “Who do the friggin’ knickers belong to, then, Dave? Your fancy piece?” I was thinking all sorts, obviously – mainly he was shagging someone else. Someone with an effin’ huge arse, mind. And he says to me – get this – he says to me, “They’re mine, love…I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this for a while.” Can you believe it? Married seventeen years and I’ve only just found out he’s a bloody cross-dresser!’

      Dawn McGinty pauses in her rant, standing next to her friend Pat as they pull cigarette packets from the pockets of their overalls. They produce their packs – one Mayfair, one Benson and Hedges – at exactly the same time, as though linked by a psychic smoke ring. Their hands, knuckles red and scraped raw from a lifetime of hard labour and vaguely toxic cleaning products, come up to form protective shields around the flame as Pat flicks the flint on her lighter.

      It’s not a warm day, just after 8 a.m. in June.The wind whipping up off the Mersey is still harsh enough to feel like a slap on the cheeks at the right angle, and certainly enough to douse the flickering flame of a five-for-a-quid lighter.

      They both inhale, then pause, silently appreciating that first rush of nicotine to the brain.

      ‘Best of the day, this one,’ says Pat, her voice like gravel. ‘On the way home from work – leaving one shithole and heading for the next…Bernie’ll be waiting there now, expecting me to come in and do his bleedin’ bacon and eggs after I’ve been cleaning offices for two hours, whinging and moaning about his bad back while he picks his bloody horses for the day.’

      ‘At least yours won’t be wearing a thong and Wonderbra set while he reads the Racing Post,’ replies Dawn, as she pulls in another drag. She doesn’t really care about Dave being a tranny. In fact she’s enjoying sharing the story with Pat, in the same way they’ve been sharing stories on the walk home from work for the last eight years. As long as he doesn’t start picking the kids up from school in a feather boa or anything, she’ll cope. There are far worse habits a husband could have, she knows.

      ‘So, what size is he then?’ asks Pat, getting into the swing of things. ‘Big fella, your Dave. Have you got him a copy of the Evans catalogue?’

      Dawn starts to answer, some quip about him having bigger tits than her, but the words die on her lips as she looks up. Something catches her eye up a few floors in that ugly old building they’re going past. The one with the students in it. The one that’s always kind of given her the creeps, with its blood-red brick and fake castle towers at the top. Looks like something you’d keep nutters locked up in, she reckons.

      It was usually quiet at this time of day, but she could see a window banging open up there. Slamming backwards and forwards, the glass jarring in the frame, snot green curtain blowing out into the sky like a cloud of flying puke. And…hair. Brown hair, dangling out in the breeze, like someone was sitting on the window ledge, leaning backwards…

      ‘Pat,’ she says, pulling the ciggie from her mouth. ‘Can you see that?’

      ‘What, love?’ asks Pat, following her gaze upwards. ‘I can’t see anything. Must be going blind as well as daft.’

      ‘That window up there – there’s someone leaning right out of it—‘

      Pat looks. She sees. Stares as the body tumbles from the window ledge like a ball of laundry, skirt flapping and hair whirling as it plummets. She sees it rotate, and sees its arms fly out to the side like a child playing aeroplanes, and sees the mouth form into the soundless ‘O’ of an unheard scream. She sees one shoe dislodge from a flailing foot and smash down to the grass, where its stiletto heel lodges firmly in the dewy earth. She sees the hands grasping at empty air; the way the head dips down to greet the ground, hair wrapped around the face like clinging seaweed.

      Then she hears it. Dawn hears it too, and it makes her sick, sick to her stomach. They hear the sound of a soft, young body slamming into concrete: a dull, wet thud as fragile flesh is split and torn and twisted; as blood oozes and vital organs concertina and bones shatter and pupils blossom with deep, dark death.

      Dawn drops her cigarette onto the path. The stub has burned right into her fingers.