‘Well, you can’t prepare. Not really, I don’t think. But they are going to be fine,’ she said, looking at Jamie and Sara.

‘Of course they’ll be fine,’ Breedge said.

‘We won’t be fine,’ Jamie said. ‘We’ll be absolutely fucked.’

‘Shut up,’ Sara said, nudging him in the ribs.

‘Boys do tend to melancholy,’ Breedge said. ‘Let him get it out of his system now and he might be in a right shape for when that baby arrives.’

Murt cleared his throat. ‘Well done, but,’ he said to Jamie, and raised his drink.

‘The best day of your life,’ Breedge said, ‘is the day you realise it’s no longer your own.’

Eileen drank too much because everyone drank too much. It was Nugent’s fault; Nugent was being stealthily and lethally generous, nipping to the bar to conjure rounds between rounds, ­pre-­empting other people as their turn to buy approached. When he wasn’t buying drinks, he was sitting at his spot at the far end of the ­horseshoe-­shaped booth, his rigid hands curled either side of his drink, sipping with a straw at his ­Jameson-­and-­ice and looking so pleased with himself he seemed almost tearful. Eileen went to the toilet and came back to the bar determined to order a round, her drunkenness like a patiently smouldering fire in the back of her head that she did not, as yet, have to address putting out. Jamie was there, ­heavy-­lidded, breathing through his nose like a stabled horse.

‘Your mother is in some way with the news,’ Eileen said.

‘She’s processing,’ Jamie said.

‘You are going to be fine.’

‘Are you fine?’

‘What?’

‘Never mind me. Are you fine, Eileen?’

‘I am.’

‘I know you are,’ Jamie said, his mouth gone beady, unrepentant with drink. ‘You are ­armour-­plated.’

‘I’m what?’ Eileen said.

‘You are a tank, Eileen. You just smash over things and you keep going.’

‘What’s that mean?’

‘Murt. That boy is struggling, in case you didn’t know.’

‘I do know.’

‘If I were in your shoes I know what I’d be saying. I’d be saying that I am trying to help. But you have to take your boot off his throat. Just for a little while you have to take your boot off his throat.’

Eileen’s body felt like a heavy coat she had neglected to remove, the blood in her face thick and clambering. She went to speak but her throat shied.

‘Murt is my best friend. I care so much about Murt,’ she was able to finally say in a thin, winded voice, as if she were trying to talk after a bout of sprinting.

‘You care for him, Eileen,’ Jamie said, ‘but you have no pity for him. He is what he is. He is not like the rest of us. You have to accept that. You have to have a little pity.’