Josh had often talked about this place to his son – never in front of Mum and never to Aysha, though. He’d told Connor how he’d got started in the ring when he’d lived here. The place was a good tan, Josh had always said; that was the Romany word for a stopping place. He had told tales of his long-ago manager Cloudy Grey, of an old derelict church, and of a tribe of deadbeat pig farmers called the Cleavers who had once lived not far from the site, where a little circle of eight trailers were parked up well off the road down a bumpy gravel track. And about Linus Pole, his old mucker with the funfair business, who’d helped him as a fighter.

The campsite backed on to woodland and then on to open fields – puvs, Josh had always called them, and Connor thought how little he knew of his Romany heritage, and it was sort of sad. But then, Shauna had never wanted to be reminded of any of it. And whenever Josh had used those old words, she’d always yelled at him, told him to speak the cunting Queen’s English.

Connor paused in the lane, looking down the track that led to the site, and then he put the car in gear and drove on until he reached a place where bill boards were up saying Fun’s the game and Pole’s the name! He turned the Porsche in off the road and inched along a rutted track, hoping he wasn’t going to fuck the Porsche’s suspension. When the track opened into a clearing with trailers, he stopped the car.

Five big dogs ran out, barking. He stayed put, as Dad had told him he always must when approaching a camp. Stay where you are, Josh had always said, and they’ll come out to see what the noise is all about. If they want you to come further, they’ll call off the dogs. Don’t go wandering in there on foot unannounced, though: the dogs are there to stop you and they’ll happily do it by tearing a good-sized chunk out of your arse.

Not that Connor had ever been within a mile of any place like this, not until now. Shauna had seen to that.

A couple of men emerged from one of the trailers, followed by a girl of about eighteen with a dark-haired baby crying on her hip. They stared over at Connor’s car, then one of the men gave a whistle and the dogs fell back, slinking off into the undergrowth as quickly as they had appeared.

The man who’d called off the dogs, a big middle-aged beer-bellied type wearing braces that strained over his shirt-covered gut, came over. Connor wound down his window.