McAvoy smiles. Says nothing. Their conversations rarely require much from him. He just has to agree, and blush, and try not to set her off.

‘So it’s an island, yes …?’

‘It’s called Sunk Island,’ explains McAvoy, again. ‘Hasn’t actually been what you would think of as an island for nearly two hundred years. And it didn’t sink. It rose.’

‘Sorry? Are we off to Atlantis?’

‘I don’t think it would quite claim that. But it did emerge from the water. It was just a big sandbank at first. You’ve seen how the cliffs erode on the coast here. They washed up here. Became this little stretch of land. It’s quite interesting …’

‘No it’s not,’ says Pharaoh, with authority. ‘You tell me things like this all the time, and you always say it’s quite interesting. This has never been proven true.’

McAvoy hangs his head. Looks up in time to see the spire of the little church. A piece of trivia bubbles up from the muddy sea in his mind. Pops, and informs him that this, at four metres tall, is the highest point for miles around. He decides to keep it to himself.

A light, bright behind him. He glances in the mirror. Makes out the shape of a low, sleek car. He slows down and watches it drop back, turning away down a side road he hadn’t even noticed.

‘Excitement?’ asks Pharaoh, noting his preoccupation with the mirror.

‘Ford Cougar,’ he says, embarrassed. ‘My first ever car. You don’t see many.’

‘Cougar?’ asks Pharaoh. ‘Can’t see that, myself. I presumed you’d have been clattering about in a Land Rover. Maybe a battered old Rover 75 – the one that looks like it might be worth a packet but isn’t …’

‘I had one for a while,’ says McAvoy, licking his lips. ‘It had a cup-holder I was very proud of. Slid out from a walnut dash – very elegant.’

‘You’re so pretty,’ says Pharaoh, shaking her head.

They drive in silence for a time. Pharaoh lights another cigarette from the tip of her last one. Pulls faces while she massages her temples, then admits defeat and puts on her sunglasses. Sits in the passenger seat like a rock star on a come down.

Ting

‘Oh here we go,’ says Pharaoh, triumphantly, brandishing her phone. ‘Right, right …’

McAvoy knows little about what is waiting for them. Pharaoh will tell him in her own good time. She was still wet from the shower when he picked her up an hour ago. She’s finally moved over from the South bank and has got herself an apartment in the Avenues – Hull’s leafy Victorian suburb. She’s been there four months and has yet to annoy any of her neighbours, which is remarkable in an area where the battle for parking spaces can be ferocious, and the off-licenses run a home-delivery service. She had towelled her wet hair and spritzed herself with perfume while sitting in the passenger seat. She may as well have been an animal rubbing her scent on him: an olfactory cattle-brand, the message ‘mine’, seared large. McAvoy knows that she does such things for no other reason than to annoy his wife, with whom her relationship is more than a little fraught. They both use him as a sounding board for their opinions about the other. It turns social occasions into a complex affair. Pharaoh spends a lot of time with the McAvoys. Her daughters are all getting older. Her eldest, Sophia, is one of Roisin’s closest friends. Fin and Lilah think of Auntie Trish as real family. McAvoy sits in the middle of it all and watches the false smiles and the barbed compliments and wonders whether the whole set-up is a punishment for a crime he cannot remember committing.