Warrant-sale protest. The third one they’d known about; the first one Neil’s editor had actually suggested he cover. Over the opening of the new bingo hall, too. Clio, formidable, stood in a phalanx of women, all of them smoking and staring, faces hard-set. Clio’s fingers were wrapped around those of Neil’s own mother, which was as big a shock as he’d ever had. Clio’s bright T-shirt and Doc Martens, his mum’s good coat.

‘We’re the first line of defence,’ Clio said, brisk and formal into his tape recorder. ‘Our theory is that none of these, ah, gentlemen, are going to be able to touch a woman. We reckon their bosses might take it a bit more seriously than if one of the boys back there got hit “accidentally”, eh?’ She nodded to Gogsy’s ring of muscle, massed in front of the front door.

‘That’s right, hen,’ muttered a couple of the women around her. Neil’s mum nodded with her chin once, although she looked scared.

Clio followed his eye.

‘And I’ll look after your mum, Neil. Don’t worry. Throw my body in front of her if I have to, isn’t that right, Mrs Munro?’

‘Ach, it’s oor Carol, Neil. She cannae even walk. She isnae trying to make a point of not paying or anything, son – she just cannae get oot the hoose. I’m no lettin those bastards in there.’ His mother pulled herself up to her full five foot, smiled at Clio with fire in her face.

The blue sedan everyone now recognized as belonging to the sheriff’s officers pulled into the street. Clio nodded and the women linked their arms, began hissing, their spit and smoke thickening the air.

She was the only woman on Gogsy’s canvassing team, and she preferred to go it alone. Gogsy was standing as the Socialist candidate, and had somehow enlisted what seemed like every resource the national party had to his cause.

‘It’s because he’s the only one with a chance of winning,’ Clio had snorted, when Neil mentioned it. He’d made the excuse that he was writing a piece, to come out with her; she had no intention of walking the beat with any of Gogsy’s monkeys, she’d whispered. He was trotting alongside her, trying to keep pace; in her high heels she was much taller than him.