“Richard and Pete was going at it with Mum,” his statement recounts. “We could hear them, me and the little ones, but we didn’t want nothing to do with it.” He indicates that he wasn’t frightened, but when probed for more information it’s clear that Michael did his best to give his older brothers a wide berth so as to avoid “a thumping if I looked at them crosswise.” That he wasn’t always able to avoid the thumping is a fact attested to by his teachers, three of whom reported to social workers bruises, scratches, burns, and at least one black eye seen on Michael’s body. Other than a single visit to the home, however, nothing more came of these reports. The system, it seems, was overburdened.

There is some suggestion that Michael passed on this abuse to his younger brothers. Indeed, from accounts gathered once four of the children went into care, it seems that Michael was given the responsibility of seeing to it that his sibling Stevie did not “wee the sheets.” Without resources as to how this was supposed to be accomplished, he apparently administered regular thrashings to the seven-year-old, who in turn took out his own rage on the other boys further down the line.

Whether Michael abused any of the littler boys that morning is not known. He reports only that once the police arrived, he got out of bed, dressed in his school uniform, and went down to the kitchen with the intention of having his breakfast. He knew it was his birthday, but he had no expectation of the day being acknowledged. “Didn’t care, did I?” was how he later put it to the police.

Breakfast consisted of frosted flakes and jam rolls. There was no milk for the cereal-Michael brings up this point twice in his earliest interviews-so Michael ate the frosted flakes dry, leaving most of the jam rolls for his younger brothers. He put one of these into the pocket of his mustard-coloured anorak (both the jam roll and the anorak becoming crucial details as things developed) and he left the house through the back garden.