‘I’ve made chops. Potatoes and a tiny, tiny little bit of veg, so we don’t all get scurvy. Will you have some, please?’

‘Not hungry,’ he said, though he was, but somewhere amid the clutter of his room there was a ­half-­full, ­party-­sized tub of Pringles, likely still perfectly edible, that would do.

‘How’s the face?’

Gerry shrugged, licked his lips. His saline made the tenderness of his split lip buzz.

‘Who’d you set on this time?’ Pell said. ‘Or who was it set on you?’

Keith Timlin. Now, Keith Timlin was a mate, but, like all of Gerry’s mates, the friendship was susceptible to these eruptions, and afterwards Gerry could never work out whose fault it was, or account for the rapidity with which the mood had escalated from idle chat to banter to ­mock-­slagging and then to real, aggressive slagging. But Gerry liked Timlin! Gerry liked Timlin more than most! Certainly more than Shaughnessy, who all of a sudden had waded in on Timlin’s side and started sneering about the smell coming off Gerry. It was Shaughnessy who only a couple of weeks back had been getting reams of slagging mileage out of making fun of Timlin’s special shoe he had to wear on account of having unevenly long legs (the ‘clopper’, as Shaughnessy called it) and of Timlin’s admittedly ­ratty-­looking features, his pinched snout and poky teeth. Gerry had been the one sticking up for Timlin then.

‘Brendan Shaughnessy,’ Gerry said.

‘There were two, though; your one Dawes said there was another lad involved. Was the other lad fighting you, too, or sticking up for you, or what?’

‘The other lad was with Shaughnessy. They were both against me.’

‘And did you start it?’

Gerry said nothing.

‘I’ll take that as a yeah.’

Gerry loathed being on exhibit like this, down on his fat arse, Pell looming above him. On the screen, the cowboy Skuse idled in the street and kicked mindlessly at dirt clods, setting the spurs of his boots chiming. Gerry kept looking at the screen.

‘You can’t keep at that, Gerry,’ Pell said. ‘Being an idiot.’

‘School is packed with dickheads.’

‘The world is packed with dickheads,’ Pell said. ‘You’ve got to stop rising to them.’

‘I will,’ Gerry said, just to get her to shut up.

‘You won’t,’ she replied.

‘I will. I will soon.’

Gerry said nothing else, just waited until Pell slid from the doorway, then sprang up, banged the door, and returned to his beanbag. He grazed the ‘X’ button with his thumb, and Skuse drew his pistol and braced into a firing stance. He strode into the Monteroy Saloon and blew away everything that moved.