As Alan stops talking, a car – loud, black and with tinted windows – pulls around the back of the garage and comes to an abrupt halt. The driver’s window glides down.

It’s Carl.

My cheek starts to pulse again and I quickly turn away and look at the floor.

‘Oi!’ And then again, a few seconds later, ‘Oi!’

I turn around, slowly.

‘How’s the face?’ Carl’s eyes are hard. He says the words more like an accusation than a question.

‘… fine,’ I manage.

Carl is emerging from the car, uncoiling himself from the deep cup of the driver’s seat and stepping towards me. ‘Let’s have a look at you.’ His hand takes a firm grip of my chin and tilts my head backwards, his fingers probing the still-raw flesh under my cheekbone. He jerks my head the other way, looks again.

I try not to catch his eye, blinking up at the massing clouds.

‘Looks alright. Healing well. What you using on it?’

The words catch in my throat. ‘Suh… Some antiseptic stuff.’

‘Keep going with it. You’ll be fine.’ He lets go of my head, but he’s not finished yet. His hands land heavily on my shoulders. I feel his fingers curl into my shoulder blades, his thumbs hard in the gap above my collarbones. ‘Now look,’ he fixes me with his eyes.

I try to focus on something the other side of him. Alan has climbed into Carl’s seat and is toying with the radio. The volume suddenly jumps, the car vibrating with the hum of bass. Carl’s head snaps round and he gives a kind of whistle, his bottom lip behind his top teeth. Alan sheepishly turns the volume down and removes himself from the driving seat.

‘Fuckin’ child,’ Carl continues, the burr of his voice softening. ‘Look, I’m sorry about the face, right?’

He seems to expect me to nod. I do so.

‘But you watch yourself with her. With Dana. She’s got issues, y’know? Needs a hand keeping on the straight and narrow. She’s not to do what she did. She knows that. But if she’s taken a shine to you, I need your help keeping her in line. ’K?’

Again I nod. Inside my head there’s a smaller version of me thrashing his arms and legs around, livid.

‘Good man. Come over here a minute.’ He puts an arm around my shoulder and leads me to the edge of the hard standing behind the garage. There’s a low brick wall and, beyond that, the ground falls away sharply so there’s a view across the backs of houses, a few scraps of green space before the railway line rises up on its embankment. There’s a goods train on the track, waiting to go through a red light, its haphazard arrangement of containers – blue, red, yellow, green – all rusting equally at the edges.