Mikey’s always there when Claire needs him. He’s a minuteman, in a constant state of alert.

Claire’s history as a firebug is well established in The Case Of The Simple Soul. Sonny works it out at the end of the story, and tells the other mystery boys (who don’t believe him). But I have always worked on the assumption that Lottie knows (because Sonny will have told her too, or told Mildred). I didn’t used to declare things as clearly as I do now; put it down to being pinned to the wall in the comments day-in-day-out. What we have gained in narrative clarity, I have lost in sanity.