And then, of course, bringing Josh had been the best thing that he could have done. With every day that passed, Dan realized how little he had known about his son before. Josh was certainly not the useless layabout that Jackie had accused him of being. Over the weeks that he had been in the factory, he had proved himself to be a hard worker, determined to do the job well, if not better than anyone else in the packing room. And that was not Dan’s own judgment of the boy’s capabilities. That was Patrick’s.

Dan also loved having his company in the cottage. Josh turned out to be surprisingly house-proud, something that Dan found most odd, remembering only too well the orderless upheaval of his son’s bedroom in London, and his enthusiasm for their home diminished any small feeling of sparseness and discomfort that Dan might have secretly harboured about the place. On those evenings when Dan arrived back at the cottage earlier than usual and Josh was working overtime in the factory, he missed having him around. He loved their new man-to-man relationship, feet up in front of the television, beer in hand, watching a football match or a film that Dan had picked up at the local video store on the way home. He therefore felt a momentary pang of resentment, before giving instant and laddish congratulations, when Josh broke the news to him that, on some occasions, the reason for his delayed return had been due to Maria José, the young Spanish girl in the factory, with whom he had either been going for a drink in the Nevisview Inn or seeing a film at the local cinema.