The pounding music prevented her from announcing their arrival, so all she could really do was stand there and wait to be spotted. But this didn’t take long, a figure suddenly disentangling himself from a shapely female form on a nearby sofa, and getting quickly to his feet.

It was Armstrong; he spoke to someone nearby, before approaching them, tucking his T-shirt into his steel-studded belt, a look of bemusement on his face. Behind him, the girl he’d been necking with also got to her feet. Lucy wasn’t surprised to see that it was Hells Kells. She wore denim cut-offs, brown leather cowboy boots, and a T-shirt so short that it displayed her flat tummy and pierced navel. With her flowing blood-red locks, she looked wildly sexy, but also tousled and vexed.

The music was switched off, the sudden silence ringing in all their ears.

The rest of the chapter gradually fell quiet as they too realised they had guests.

Armstrong eyed the twosome sternly. ‘I take it you’re not here on police business?’

‘What would it matter if I was?’ Lucy said.

‘For one thing, you’d need a warrant to come in here, because you certainly haven’t got permission.’

‘Well, Kyle …’ she sighed, ‘I haven’t brought you a warrant. Instead, as you can see, I’ve brought you my mum.’

‘Your mum?’ Armstrong regarded Cora uncomprehendingly. Only now, so many years after he’d last seen her, did he recognise the older woman. ‘What the bloody hell is she doing here?’

‘Hello to you as well, Kyle,’ Cora said, disgust at his lack of manners briefly distracting her from her queasy stomach.

‘Is this a joke, or what?’ he demanded.

‘Yeah, sure.’ Lucy put an arm round Cora, who she thought might be about to faint. ‘The laughs are coming thick and fast. Check Mum out … she’s rolling in the bloody aisles.’

‘Lucy … what’s going on?’ he asked.

‘I take it you’ve got toilets in here?’

‘You’ve come to use the bog?’

‘Mum isn’t doing so well.’

Armstrong glanced at Cora again, finally taking in her moist forehead, her grey lips, her waxen pallor. He signalled to Hells Kells. She arrived at his side like a bullet, but her expression turned peevish when he asked her to escort Cora to the Ladies. She scowled at Lucy before strutting off on her heeled boots, summoning Cora with a hooked finger.

Cora stumbled in pursuit, pausing only to hand Lucy her mobile phone.

‘No one else outside,’ Tommy Five-Bellies said, filling the doorway. ‘Came on her own. Apart from the old bird. Well, I say old … I wouldn’t mind going a round or two with her.’

‘You shut your dirty mouth!’ Lucy snapped.