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Alexi regards me for a long moment, so much so I look up at him to see if he even heard me and catch those calm grey eyes locked on me. He looks thoughtful and strangely sobering.

‘When Gino and I were around nine years old we looked after a stray dog we called Benny …’ He frowns at me, an air of cute boy crossing his face as though locked onto a happy memory of a pet he once loved. A tiny little hint of dimple as something in his mind’s eye makes him smile just a fraction. I quieten myself down and listen intently, immediately drawn to the hints of genuine in him and captured by it.

‘This one day, after school, we took a bone down to the street where we knew he liked to hang around during the day, and we found his body in the gutter … car had hit him and he had died quickly from his injuries when we weren’t there.’ Alexi frowns harder and that softness pales out to a far more sinister look that I am more familiar with;