Windy here. A bellowing wind, plucking the water up into peaks. Not exactly inviting, but you always had to go in. No point in wimping out once you’d come to have a look. You couldn’t let it beat you. An old white rowboat bashed itself against the stones, saying go in, go in.

Out in the lough, Matty stopped and turned around in a slow circle. A hazy sky. The fisherman was packing up, a faint slam of the car door making crows break out of the trees. The wind ululated against the swim cap, finding its way in past the gap in the neoprene. All you would have to do was stop moving. Let it take over. A strange, unobtrusive death. You’d never be found out here. Only Heather had a faint idea of Matty’s location, and even if drowning was suspected, there was so much water to search. Water would steal, conceal, own.

There had been a fair few casualties over the years at the Ladies’ Pond, women who had not understood the savagery of the winter water enough, left light-headed and juddery, wordless, as the lifeguards called ambulances. But if you were used to it, the body stood firm a little longer. Just a few months ago, a Swedish woman had been trapped under ice for eighty minutes, a body temperature of thirteen degrees when she was rescued, the lowest ever recorded for a survivor. The doctor on the initial examination had described her as ashen, flaxen-white, and looking absolutely dead. The ice pocket and the extreme slowing of her metabolism had saved her.

Right, daydreamer. You going to be here all day?

Matty lay back, let the small, harrying waves buoy each limb, muscles beginning to thicken with the cold. Headed to shore.

The boxing club was up a side road in Cavan, a town of dark-grey buildings.

What a shithole.

But was it your shithole? Matty thought. There was a single light at the corner of the building, a cold tangerine glow over the door.

There’d been no more boxing, once Joe had gone. Matty had returned to the club in East Finchley aged fifteen, after Italy. No Freddie. The old man had snuffed it, the new coach had said. Heart attack. It felt hard asking to join without Joe there. The coach’s look hadn’t exactly been friendly.

You could have, though. No harm in asking. Got to be a man about these things.

They were coming out now, youngish guys mostly, rucksacks or gym bags slung over one shoulder. Two of them spoke in especially unintelligible accents to each other before it became clear that the rapidly swishing words must be Irish. Another man stopped underneath the light, sparking up a cigarette, doing a loose-limbed shiver.

Matty went over. ‘Excuse me, mate. Don’t suppose there are any Maughans that come here?’