JJ at least did not make things worse by losing it on Danny’s behalf, just sat in his chair clenching his jaw and listening. After, out in the hall, he hugged Danny and growled, ‘Fuck them, we’ll show them.’ By which his father meant there were other options. And that was true. Even now that was true. It was not too late for Danny to make himself available for trials. He had contacts in the UK, he still had a reputation among scouts. A career in the game was salvageable, albeit likely at a much lower level. If he wanted it badly enough he might find a way back in, but the heart had gone out of it for him. The day he was cut loose by United was the day Danny decided he was done with football, and he was still done with it, because it was an awful thing, maybe the worst thing, to discover that in the end you were only good enough to get far enough to find out that you were not good enough. So he packed up, came home and spent a long time lying on his childhood bed staring at the cruel, arrogant visage of Cristiano Ronaldo tacked to the back of the bedroom door. His parents weren’t sure what to do. He insisted he was not going back to England. His education had been a mishmash of the Irish and English systems; his parents said they wanted him to go back to Muredach’s, the boys’ secondary school, and sit his ­final-­year exams. But Danny’s ­peers – Shauna ­included – were off to college in a couple of months. The idea of doing a year on his own, back in a school he’d not set foot in in almost three years, was like something from an anxiety dream. The parents kept at him and he kept saying no. Eventually JJ told ­him – didn’t ask ­him – told him, that Danny was going to come work for him, for as long as it took for him to decide what he was going to do, and so that’s what happened. His daddy bailed him out. He’d been in the dealership since.

What Danny wanted to do now was text Budgie back:

FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK OOOOOOOOOOOOFF.

Instead, he put away his phone and climbed into his car.

2

Danny’s ­Friday-­evening routine was always the same. Come five o’clock, if he wasn’t working late, he would lace it directly across town to Shauna’s folks’ place. Sometimes they just hung out, ate pizza and watched films. Mostly they went out with Shauna’s friends. Danny didn’t mind either way. He was content to do whatever Shauna wanted to do.