Amongst the acrid stench of stale urine in the room is the lingering smell of damp. I hold a tissue over my nose and mouth, but it only keeps in my nostrils what I have already inhaled.

Circular blobs of black mould have gathered at the bottom of the walls and are inching their way up towards the ceiling like ivy. I spot a gold-framed painting of a colourful and serene Jesus nailed to the wall. There’s a luminous halo hanging over his head and he holds out his hand as if offering hope or forgiveness to those who need it. He’s wasting his time; I need neither.

There are a couple of mattresses on the floor with so many stains it’s impossible to know what the original pattern was. Dozens of empty cans of supermarket own- brand cider are scattered across the floor, along with discarded plastic needles, scorched tin foil, cigarette lighters and cracked plastic pipes. Beneath the mould are fine lines of a brown spray, likely blood ejected from the syringes. This could easily be a set from that Trainspotting film. Yet amongst all this dereliction, I have created beauty.

Somewhere in this tower block is a stereo blasting out Prince’s song ‘1999’. We might be on the cusp of a new millennium but if I never hear it again it will be too soon. I turn to stare out from the cracked window, partially covered by a solitary curtain hanging off the track. The city of

Sheffield lies beyond it and I feel as if I know it well, even if I only came here a couple of times before today. It’s amazing what you can learn about an area from only the photographs people have uploaded on to the World Wide Web, isn’t it? I’ve grown to love the home computer I bought on a whim in the New Year sales. Once you turn it on, it only takes a few minutes to connect before you have the world at your fingertips. My only fear is that it’s going to be damaged by the millennium bug they’re all talking about.

My attention returns to the suitcase in front of me, a tan-coloured one with two copper catches. The leather is tough, taut and built to last, and its framework is more than strong enough to support the dead body of the girl inside it.

She posed little challenge, God bless her. One of the forgotten children, I assume, the ones whose profiles are crammed inside a folder somewhere in a social services department’s ‘at risk’ filing cabinet. Budget cuts meant she probably wasn’t monitored as regularly as staff might have liked. If George and I had been on a register that people had paid attention to, then things might have turned out very differently for us.

I estimate the girl was eight, perhaps nine, and a sliver of a thing. Blink and you’d miss her. Undernourished, sapling arms and legs, a dirty Britney Spears T-shirt and unwashed hair. I doubt she had been to school in an age. Here, in the slum she called home, she was the queen of the concrete corridors as she glided up and down on her chipped pink scooter. She was too young to understand that this kind of living was not the norm.

She is better off where she is now, with me. I have saved her from a lifetime of poverty, misery and repeating the mistakes of her parents.

On a previous recce I’d followed her and the man charged with her care back to their home from a little further beyond the estate. Her father scratched constantly at his groin and I assume he either had a sexually

transmitted infection or had run out of veins in his arms and legs and was now using anything left to inject. He had bought tobacco, rolling papers, lighters and a bottle of vodka. His daughter skipped as she carried the alcohol home. Their front door was broken and partially boarded up, as if once the target of a police raid.

Earlier today, from where she played alone in the car park, I lured the girl into this empty flat by telling her Daddy was poorly and needed help. She followed me without question, suggesting this was the norm. Once we were alone I wrapped my hands around her neck and wasted no time in doing what I came here to do. Afterwards and with a firm click, I locked the suitcase and dragged it into the centre of the room, directly below the window. Then I placed her clothes in front of it.

Now, I carefully kick away from the case the beer and food cans, discarded newspapers and needles, making sure their sharp points don’t penetrate my footwear. Finally, she has a clean patch surrounding her. Then I stand in the doorway and relax my mind and body and score the scene to memory.

However, this tried-and-tested process is not coming to me as naturally as it usually does. I’m distracted. I can’t be sure if it’s the lighting or another part of my staging that is askew. Whatever the reason, I’m transported back some twenty years, and instead of the suitcase, I’m staring at my parents from the doorway of their dining room. I’m unaware of the context of their conversation but I distinctly recall my father telling my mother that he forgave her. Then he held her hand and kissed her. It was an unusually tender moment between them, at least in front of my brother and in front of me. The affection George and I required from them was less forthcoming.

Prior to me attending a comprehensive shortly before my thirteenth birthday, Dad homeschooled us as we moved from area to area and house to house. He was evidently an

educated man, judging by his firm grasp of most subjects. He used long words and taught us how to phrase and verbalise our thoughts and questions more poetically than other children might. But when in the company of our peers, he insisted we mirror their language and behaviour so as to blend in.

He loved the English language but art was his favourite subject and he’d spend hours encouraging us to draw and paint.

‘Whatever it is you’re sketching, be it a tree or a person or something abstract, always remember to frame what you want the viewer to see,’ he would remind us. ‘You must control their focus . . . burn it into their memories so they can close their eyes and return to it whenever they want to.’ He is long gone but his advice remains.

George and I might have been too young to understand the complexities of the family we’d been born into, but we were still able to pretend to be like normal children when the opportunities arose. We’d take ourselves to the play park in the grounds of the village, but hide in the bushes if other kids arrived because we were only allowed to befriend children at youth and social clubs and church events of our parents’ choosing. The sole purpose of that was for us to bring them home to play. Then our part was complete and our parents took charge. One boy, Martin Hamilton, jumps out from my past and into the present so suddenly and with such clarity that it’s as if he is here in the room with us. He remains long enough for me to recall the day he tore our family apart. I shake my head and he vanishes like a fine mist.

I need to start making a move from this flat. After I’m finally able to frame the girl in the suitcase and take my mental snapshot of the image I’ll return to, I ready myself to leave. But before I carry her away with me, a sudden burst of light appears through the grey skies and settles on the painting of Jesus. I release a smile. He is offering me

forgiveness again. Sorry Jesus, you are wasting your time. It should be me who is forgiving you for ignoring us all those years.