After a moment’s hesitation I handed it over, thinking: there is something not at all good about turning a gun over to my daughter. She expertly clicked on the safety, then unloaded the magazine, checking it thoroughly. I lit up two cigarettes, handing her one.

‘You take lessons with that thing?’

‘You don’t pack a Glock without taking lessons.’

‘The gun is legal?’

‘Of course it’s fucking legal.’

‘How did that sad crazy kid get hold of it?’

‘Had to go to the bathroom real bad. So tired after forty-eight hours without sleep. Stupidly left my bag in the kitchen. When I walked out I found her pointing the Glock at me. Tried to explain over and over again that I was on her side. Six fucking hours she had that gun on me. Screaming lunatic shit about shooting me, shooting the baby, then going back to Brentwood with the corpse of Kelleher’s dead child – it’s the boy he’s always wanted – and shooting the man who enslaved her in his balls, then pouring gasoline over him and tossing the match and watching him become a human torch.’

‘Mother of God …’

‘Yeah, it’s a real Disney movie. The truth is: that kid inside the trailer has been so abused and degraded and cut off from the world, I’m not surprised she’s beyond loco. It still doesn’t give her an excuse to turn a gun on me or fire the fucking thing. Slapping her around … I’m kind of ashamed of that. But after six hours having my life threatened by her –’

‘Is she really going to abort the baby?’

‘She is absolutely insistent on it.’

‘But she’s more than five months pregnant.’

‘Stay out of it, Poppa.’

‘I can voice an opinion, Klara.’

‘And I am telling you: I don’t care how late the pregnancy is. It’s her choice, her call. The baby was born out of rape. The father is a man she loathes – which is using a nice word to describe what she really feels about that monster. If she wants to terminate it –’

‘That’s not a fetus in her. That’s a fully formed child.’

‘This is not your business.’

‘You’ve made it my business, Klara.’

Silence. She gave me that petulant look I remembered when she was fifteen years old and I told her to clean up her room. I checked my watch. It was now 9.08 p.m. I wanted nothing more than a place to lay my head.

‘What’s the plan now?’ I asked.

‘That depends on Elise. We’ve only got the one bed and a sofa.’

‘I’ll talk to Elise,’ I said.

‘Let me check if things have calmed down.’

Klara went up to the trailer front door and peered in.

‘Yeah, we’re good,’ she said.