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rely on external evidence to reconstruct the true sequence. Whether he had got caught shoplifting in Woolworth’s in 1963 or 1965, for example, he couldn’t remember, though he recollected with absolute clarity the sense of fear and helplessness in that cramped triangular room under the escalator, the cloying smell of Old Spice aftershave and the way the two dark-suited shop detectives laughed as they pushed him about and made him empty his pockets. But when he thought about it more, he remembered it was also the same day he had bought the brand-new With the Beatles LP, which was released in late November 1963.
    And that was the way it often happened. Remember one small thing—a smell, a piece of music, the weather, a fragment of conversation—then scrutinize it, question it from every angle, and before you know it, there’s another piece of information you thought you’d forgotten. And another. It didn’t always work, but sometimes when he did this, Banks ended up creating a film of his own past, a film which he was both watching and acting in at the same time. He could see what clothes he was wearing, knew what he was feeling, what people were saying, how warm or cold it was. Sometimes the sheer reality of the memory terrified him and he had to snap himself out of it in a cold sweat.
    Just over a week after he had returned from a holiday in Blackpool with the Banks family, Graham Marshall had disappeared during his Sunday-morning paper round out of Donald Bradford’s newsagent’s shop across the main road, a round he had been walking for about six months, and one that Banks himself had walked a year or so earlier, when Mr. Thackeray owned the shop. At first, of course, nobody knew anything about what had happened, apart from Mr. and Mrs. Marshall and the police.
    As Banks leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, he tried to reconstruct that Sunday. It would have started in the normal way. On weekends, Banks usually stayed in bed until lunchtime, when his mother called him down for the roast.During lunch they would listen to the radio comedies on the Light Programme: The Navy Lark and Round the Horne, until The Billy Cotton Band Show drove Banks out of doors to meet up with his friends on the estate.
    Sometimes, the five of them—Banks, Graham, Steve Hill, Paul Major and Dave Grenfell—would go walking in the local park, staking out an area of grass near the playing fields, and listen to Alan Freeman’s Pick of the Pops on Paul’s trannie, watching the girls walk by. Sometimes Steve would get bold and offer one of them a couple of Woodbines to toss him off, but mostly, they just watched and yearned from a distance.
    Other Sundays they’d gather at Paul’s and play records, which was what they did on the day Graham disappeared, Banks remembered. Paul’s was best because he had a new Dansette which he would bring outside on the steps if the weather was good. They didn’t play the music too loudly, so nobody complained. If Paul’s mum and dad were out, they’d sneak a cigarette or two as well. That Sunday, everyone was there except Graham, and nobody knew why he was missing, unless his parents were keeping him in the house for some reason. They could be strict, Graham’s parents, especially his dad. Still, whatever the reason, he wasn’t there, and nobody thought too much of it.
    There they would be, then, sitting on the steps, wearing their twelve-inch-bottom drainpipe trousers, tight-fitting shirts and winkle-pickers, hair about as long as they could grow it before their parents prescribed a trip to Mad Freddy’s, the local barber’s. No doubt they played other music, but the highlights of that day, Banks remembered, were Steve’s pristine copy of the latest Bob Dylan LP, Bringing It All Back Home, and Banks’s Help!
    Along with his fascination with masturbation, Steve Hill had some rather way-out tastes in music. Other kids