Becka sat at the checkout, challenged but smiling. Passing cheese over the magic square she looked out the glass and said, ‘hope the weather changes.’ Rain day after day had left the town empty, people fortressed in their homes. But the dogs stayed out. Every June when it rained, they overran the town screaming, the bitches in heat, scattering at the first sign of a rainbow.

The Big Issue seller was found dead just two days before. Flesh had been torn from her in clumps and piled up in a short mound. The old boy discovered her in the downpour, naked but for the paisley scarf she wrapped round her head. The pub said that it was the dogs and a table thought she deserved it, no right in our town.

‘I don’t want to walk home tonight. Not like this,’ Becka said, absently stroking the boy band pin under her name tag. Ah, Becka.