‘Where would she go?’ Josh asked. He couldn’t look at Eva. This should have been building up to the happiest time in a mother’s life, seeing a daughter marry, and now it was all destroyed. Eva’s heartbreak was too raw. It made him feel ashamed.

‘Maybe to the cousins in Ireland?’ said Pally.

‘Give me the address,’ said Josh.

‘I’ll phone them from the village,’ said Pally.

‘Give me their damned address.’

‘Let him have it, Pally,’ said Eva, so Pally did.

22

22

The ring was set up behind Pole’s funfair at midnight. At this point Shauna was thinking, It’s too soon, this is ridiculous. Josh had only last night taken a hell of a pasting off Matty and now he was going toe-to-toe with another monster of a man. Added to which, he seemed numbed by the sudden turn of events with Claire. At the moment she didn’t know whether he was going to just lay down and die, or kill some bastard with his bare hands. It could go either way.

This match wasn’t going to be a ‘straightener’, a stand-up fist-fight like the one he’d had with Matty. This one was going to be ‘all-in’, and that was worse, much rougher, an ‘anything-goes’ type of bout where eyes could get gouged out, kicking was all right, biting too, and if ribs were broken or if anybody happened to die of a busted spleen, that was a shame, but it was OK.

Paul Lean was Linus Pole’s nephew and he was a monster. He was nearly seven feet tall, and solid as a bulldog, his nose flattened and knocked sideways so often that he breathed like a bulldog, too, with a rasping wheeze. You heard him before he ever came into view, and when he came into view that was enough to make quite a few men shit themselves and run the other way.

But not Josh. Tonight, a desperate madness swamped him. The betting was under way and the ref was in the ring. The two of them – Josh looking almost lightweight, his head and middle black with bruises, and Paul like a brick wall – were squaring up when the bell went and they were off. Screams and cheers and shouts went up all around the ring and Shauna, standing in Josh’s corner, was jostled and shoved as everyone yelled suggestions as to how they would despatch him. Paul was their boy, their favourite. Josh, big as he was, looked like a child in contrast.