‘Agent shifting cut,’ I heard Da’s voice in my head. I saw his dirty hands squaring up a pack on the driving seat on the front of the wagon. ‘See this Merry? D’ye see?’

It was a tricky move. Da used to bodge it, I learned it from watching him failing at it. I glanced around. It was growing light outside but it was still dark in here with the thick musty curtains at the window. Someone at one of the tables was disputing a bill and people were glancing that way. I looked at Captain Thomas.

‘Trouble?’ I asked, nodding towards the table. Captain Thomas looked over. A man had lurched to his feet and tipped the table sideways. I grasped the pack in two hands, my left holding the top half of the pack, and my right holding the bottom. With one swift movement I pulled the bottom half gripped in my right hand and put it towards Captain Thomas.

‘Nothing really,’ he said looking back. He completed the cut, moving the half-deck which was furthest from him on top of the one nearest to him. Without knowing it, he had put my stacked deck back together again. And no one had spotted it.

I heard my heart thudding loud in my ears, in my neck, in my throat. So loud that I thought they would all hear it over the jostle and confusion of the drunk man being thrust down the stairs and out into the street.

I dealt with a trace of awkwardness and the cards lay on the table. Will picked up his cards and I saw his eyes widen slightly, but his hand outstretched to the wine glass did not tremble.

He won, of course.

I saw Captain Thomas squinting at his cards, and at the backs of Will’s. I kept my cards low, held in my cupped hands in case there were markings in the back he could see. I watched the two of them warning each other to call spades for trumps, or diamonds. Hearts or clubs. It would make no odds. Will had a King, a Queen or an Ace in every hand. The other good cards which I had scattered around the table were just to dress the act.

They couldn’t nail it. They were so sure of me as a pigeon. They had seen me shuffle clean enough, and then they had seen me cut. And they believed, as many fools before them have believed, that you cannot stack a cut.

I slid the last card across the table. Captain Thomas took the trick, it was his third. Will had five, Bob Redfern had three tricks, I had two. Will was a truly awful card-player; with the hands I had given him he should have wiped the floor with the three of us.

‘I’ve won!’ he said incredulous.