Gegsy. With his bumboys and his shirtlifters and all the rest. Gegsy, who’d made a couple more mixtapes and advised on pirate radio stations, rattled off the names of clubs that Matty was then far too young to go into.

It had been hard to know what to say after that. Matty had drunk the Pepsi while Daz talked about his plan to move to Ibiza, and when he’d waved to a group of guys, quietly wandered away.

The music had got louder. More rock. Maybe it would go on all night, and Matty would have to listen to it coming up through the ceiling in the room upstairs.

It was damp outside, a mist coming down. There was an incongruous Blues Brothers statue at the entrance to the pub, large and plastic, the two of them gurning in their pork pie hats. Matty walked to the fence line at the end of the car park, and looked up at the blackness. The lack of stars.

‘All right now?’ A low, musical voice, coming from a deep shadow by the wall of the pub.

Matty didn’t feel like talking. Made busy with cigarette and lighter.

‘That your van there?’

A plume of smoke, blown out into the fine drizzle. ‘Yeah.’

‘Lovely. You’ve got the right idea, so you have.’ He stepped out, a large man, not tall. Belly protruding from his long coat, which itself seemed to be bulging, lumpen. ‘Those bloody tinkers up Longford way. They park their caravans and turn a field into a rubbish site. Let their children run around with hardly a stitch on. You’ll not be one of them.’

No. And yes. ‘No.’

‘Very good.’ The man shuffled back to his spot, a low wall by a drain under the awning. ‘You’ll have a drink with me.’ It wasn’t a question.

Matty sat down on the wall out of the rain and watched him pull out a small bottle of Bushmills, half-filling a mug. ‘That’s not from the pub?’

‘God in heaven, no. This is from the pub, though.’ He leant worryingly far over and pulled out a can of Sprite from one of his pockets, topping it up, the froth just stopping short of overflowing. ‘That’ll put hairs on your chest,’ he said. ‘You look like you need a few.’ The dull, settled sort of feeling, adding to the headache. Better than being seen as a girl, but still not right.

They sat in silence for a minute. Matty’s fist still hurt from earlier. Two knuckles were a dull red.

‘I’m using my powers of divination to work out that you’re not a local.’ He gave a rheumy cough.

‘No.’

‘But you’ve Irish in there.’