‘You’re up.’ Brigid had come in, wearing a long pink dressing gown with blood-red flowers on it. Her black hair was loose and unkempt. She nodded at the book. ‘It says it’s good to move around.’

The T-shirt that Matty was wearing went halfway down the thighs – Brigid was tall. Matty pulled it down anyway. ‘Where am I?’

‘My house,’ she said, smiling before understanding properly. ‘Oh.’ She said a name and Matty tried to remember seeing it on the map.

Brigid opened a kitchen drawer. ‘I didn’t think you could be much of a local.’ She turned the pages of the road map and passed it over, pointing.

They were back south of the lay-by, perhaps twenty miles or so. A small village. Not far from the last lough, with the little girl and her bicycle. Just inside the Irish border.

‘I’d been to see a friend last night,’ Brigid said.

The long bend in the road. The edge of the water where it had happened.

‘You must be starving. Do you think you can eat?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’ll make us something. I’m vegetarian, is that all right for you?’

‘Yeah. I need to get something from the van.’

Brigid looked up. ‘Not without a coat, you won’t.’

Blood. There was a fine spray of it along the edge of the sink. A handprint on the counter and another on the back window. A dark patch on the floor.

Matty stood between Shifty’s front seats, wearing Brigid’s long mac and wellies, swaying a little. The garage was large and damp-smelling, with shelves packed full of old radios and coils of electrical wire.

Two pieces of the beer bottle lay like shards of glazed toffee, the rest sprinkled more finely. The neck of the bottle was on its side in the corner. A strong smell of beer. Matty crouched down, gripped by pain, and picked a piece up. The blood had hardened, lacquered the glass. Everything went woozy.

He’d been in here. He’d almost—

The garage began to spin. Matty clutched onto the edge of a shelf until it faded, and stumbled back to the house.

Brigid was a teacher. Primary school. No kids herself, or no evidence of any at least. On the chair in the bedroom, she talked about her job, and of travelling – six months spent away, Oman, Goa, Malaysia. Matty half-listened, thinking of the flecks of blood on the aluminium of the sink, thinking of Dale falling against the front seats, the baffled expression.

‘Is it horrible?’ Brigid suddenly said. Matty had hardly eaten.