There were a couple of big guys having pints pulled for them. One was especially large, a neck like a joint of gammon, muscles straining against his T-shirt, holding a mobile phone prominently. The other was slimmer though still filled out at the front, reddish pale skin and blond hair. He had his back to the bar and kept glancing over. Why did they always want to talk?

Outside, nothing but darkness, and the knowledge of mountains and moorland again. Frontier-like. It had already been dark on the drive, a vast ridge of mountains taking up much of the deep sky on the right. Definitely more dramatic than the central lowlands, almost Canadian. It made more sense, why you’d want to come back, if it was to this.

Matty got up to pay, buying another bottle of beer for the road or for whatever shit B & B lay ahead. It was probably getting late. Should have got a move on, driven around by now to find one.

‘All right, now?’ The one who’d been looking over had edged closer. His friend had gone outside.

Nod.

‘Thought they were having a winning streak, these lot,’ he said, holding his bottle roughly towards the TV in the corner.

‘They lost the last one.’

‘That right? You keep up with it all, do you?’

‘Yeah, sometimes.’

‘The thing about football,’ Joe had said once, walking up to Dartford’s ground for an away match, ‘is it’s a global language. You could land yourself in bleeding Guinea-Bissau or the middle of the Pacific, utter the two magical words “Kevin Keegan” and everyone would be your friend.’

The guy was called Dale and was quite sweet, in a shy sort of way. Matty talked the talk, nil–nil draws and away form, the goalie nearing retirement. There was a hay-like tint to his close-cropped hair, ruddy cheeks. A gold chain visible underneath the polo shirt, but least there wasn’t a cross on the end of it. Every time he laughed, he blinked three times.

Matty got the bartender to open the beer bottle.

‘Where yous from, then?’ Dale said.

Matty wasn’t sure if the new edge to the question had been imagined or not. The closeness to the border, the risk of getting the answer wrong. You could only be one or the other.

‘London.’

‘Oh, yeah? Nice. My cousin moved to London.’ He made it sound as important as if they’d moved to the Far East, or the Arctic.

Outside, there was the distinctive sound of someone speaking loudly into their mobile phone.

‘Are you Arsenal, then? Or Chelsea?’

‘Barnet, mostly.’

‘They any good?’ There was a small cut on his bottom lip that he kept thumbing. ‘I don’t follow the lower-end stuff.’

‘Yeah, well, you’re not missing much.’

Watch it, you. That’s my team you’re talking about.