Tyrone knew what was coming; he’d seen Jason like this before. He wouldn’t tolerate being made a fool of. He nodded to two guys, who walked up behind Adam and held his arms.

‘Man! Bruv! What you doing? It was nuffin’. I swear, it wasn’t me. It was someone else in your yard, fam.’

The first blow was sickening, and Adam squealed, but with the subsequent connections between knuckle and face, he grew quiet.

By the time Jason had finished, blood gushed from Adam’s face and spatters covered the floor. He slumped down and everyone froze, not knowing what to expect next. Jason turned the music up and asked if anyone fancied KFC.

Chapter 23

‘Hey, how you doing?’ Kelly went to Josie and opened her arms. Josie fell into them and hugged her. It was funny how Josie had slowly had more and more impact on her life, and now she felt like the girl’s mother. In fact, Josie visited her own mother pretty rarely, a fact the woman blamed on Johnny. But Josie was old enough to make her own mind up. Any divisions Johnny had suffered with his daughter now seemed to have been healed, and through the power of love alone. Josie was happy here.

‘I’m good. I had a therapy session today.’

‘How did it go?’

Johnny appeared wearing an apron, and Kelly kissed him.

‘I don’t really know. We just kind of sit and she plays me these meditative scripts. I feel stoned afterwards.’

‘That good?’

Johnny rolled his eyes. Josie was more candid with Kelly than she was with him, and he was slightly jealous, but feigned disapproval when they discussed drugs, gangs and boys. Now, more than ever, it was important to have open discourse about the realities of teenage life, though Johnny didn’t have the same skill set. He’d counselled hundreds of soldiers through PTSD but he couldn’t discuss tragedy and pain with his daughter; he didn’t know how to start. So he listened to Kelly do it, and it worked. Josie opened up to her.

‘Have you caught them yet?’ Josie asked. She was nervy as a result of the accident, and any bad news made her worse.

‘No. But we will. The family are doing a press conference in the morning.’

‘Wow. I can’t imagine how hard that’s going to be.’

‘I know. The son is around your age and he’s quite determined to go through with it. It’s a very courageous thing to do. Did you see the estate on the news?’

‘The police raids?’ Johnny said. ‘Jesus, I thought we were watching downtown New York!’

‘President Trump tweeted that our streets are worse,’ Josie said.

‘You follow him on Twitter?’ Johnny was surprised.