Months passed and still Josh suffered bad dreams over Andrew Meredith’s death. He couldn’t seem to shake off the night-time horrors. He would wake sweating, guilt scorching through him like molten lava. He’d killed a man for the worst of reasons – to get money to keep Shauna happy and their heads above water. He was cursed, bound for hell. He hadn’t even had the decency to attend his own mother’s funeral. And he should have. He knew that.

Without telling Shauna, he drove off one day and headed down to Winchester, to the big church where the gypsy graves were. Alone, he walked among the gorgi gravestones, the grey ones, the plain ones, until he reached the corner where his own kind was buried.

You couldn’t miss it.

Gypsy families always paid out a fortune on honouring their dead. All the headstones here were lavish in the extreme; bigger, taller, carved out of black granite and with the names of the deceased etched in gold. Intricate carvings of horses and lurchers had been fashioned all around each loved one’s name.

The flowers on each and every grave, although artificial, were replaced without fail every year with new ones, so the sun never bleached out their vivid colours of scarlet, turquoise, green, yellow or bright orange. All the gypsy families – Shauna’s lot, the Everetts, Claire’s kin, the Milos, and his own, the Flynns – were clustered together here, all the plots paid for, reserved. His own included. Mum had told him that once, long ago, when she wasn’t off her head on the gin. She had been laid to rest here, beside his bully of a father. And one day Josh would rest right beside them.

He steeled himself and walked further, going in among the Flynn graves. Granny Flynn was there, and Grandpa, and their parents too; all his own kin – or jeal, in the old language of Cant. There was Dad, the old bugger. And there . . . oh Christ, there was his mother’s grave. The stone he’d paid for was up. Josh looked at it and his eyes filled with tears as he thought of her miserable life and sorry end.

HERE LIES MONICA DELILAH FLYNN

MUCH LOVED WIFE AND MOTHER

He couldn’t read any more, he couldn’t even see. He stood there before his mother’s fabulously carved headstone, with two rearing horses carved into the granite. Both the magnificent headstone and the big cluster of emerald-green fake carnations in the urn went out of focus as he cried. He cried for her and for his own life too, irretrievably ruined when he’d lost the girl he loved.

Then he became aware of someone standing right behind him.