Alison had no idea, and said so. She recognised this bluster in Martin; she’d seen it before. There was spittle on his lips, which were incongruously, revoltingly feminine in his brutish face, plump and red and soft. In his right eye a burst blood vessel had filled in half of the white, which gave him a ravaged look, disorderly, off balance. He had reddish hair cut close to the skull and a tattoo on his neck, a blank-eyed snake curling around the flat blade of a dagger. The Byrds ended their song and started another, ‘Why’, the final track on Younger Than Yesterday, and Alison, steady as a rock, registered this although only on the margins, because she was imagining, from the distance of her mind, the horror of being Martin, pitying him his useless bulk, his foolish, clumsy torment, all his responses slowed down by beer, humiliated by Catherine who – he was probably right about this – was more than likely in another man’s bed, trading her body for the promise of more booze, postponing her shame and remorse until the next time she was sober.

Martin stepped closer to Alison, who stood her ground. ‘If you dunt tell me where she is, I’ll fucking beat it out o’ you,’ he said, and he let his fingers roam over the buckle of his belt.

‘I’ve been out all day,’ Alison said steadily. ‘How would I know?’ Contempt made her calm. She felt certain she’d kill him before she’d let him lay a finger on her. Martin breathed like a bull through flared nostrils and Alison half expected him to start pawing at the floor with one of his black boots. She wanted Daniel, suddenly, urgently. Daniel, his family, his house; she wanted it all with a shocking, desperate longing, but most especially, she wanted him, his arms around her. Not here though. Never here.

‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘wasn’t she out with you?’

Beer, the effects of it, made him suddenly stagger backwards and then plunge recklessly forward, as if the landing was tilting like a boat in a storm. He cursed, righted himself, and slowly but deliberately focused his gaze on Alison’s breasts, and this was meant to intimidate her, but she wasn’t afraid of Martin Baxter, not at all.

‘She’s at the Carlton,’ Alison said, realising suddenly that any old lie would get Martin out of the house. ‘Yeah, that’s what she said. The Carlton.’

He raised his head and regarded her with his bloodshot, swimming eyes.

‘You said you dint know,’ he said, pointing a fat forefinger at her face.