Chicken and chips for dinner, part of a sticky toffee pudding for dessert, in a long, low-ceilinged pub with diamond leading on the windows and arcade games in the corner. Matty tried to stick to a bodybuilder’s diet – meat, eggs, nuts. ‘Scrawny sort of bruiser, aren’t you?’ Heather would say back in London, leaning over the bar, batting her false eyelashes. But swimming, especially in winter, made you crave stodge. The body needing to fortify itself after the rude jolt of the water.

Another half of cider. ‘Is it all right to park my camper overnight out the back?’

The landlady looked up. ‘No, it’s not, I’m afraid. We shut it up.’

No harm in asking. ‘OK. Ta.’ Back to the moorland roads, then.

Matty got Shifty into the mountains, just, peering through the windscreen, the map sliding off the dashboard. Turned off N.W. A. Best not to think about how high up they were, how sheer the right-hand drop might be past the reach of the headlights. In the end, the van overshot, and had to roll back on a bend before reversing into the deserted car park.

Matty opened the door and switched the torch on.

The wind was engulfing, predatory. Over there in the blackness was another lough, already ringed in pencil on the map. Matty skirted the tarmac, kicking at a paint pot and an old car radio, rusted black. Took a piss by three alcopop bottles, listening to the gargle of a burn nearby taking the sound over.

Not much chance of being chucked out of here.

There was a knack to opening Shifty’s side door, hip pushing against it, handle up and then shoved along. ‘Just you and me, mate,’ Matty said, to metal and rubber, closing the door and putting the kettle on the hob.

Shifty came from a Welshman’s junk and furniture shop in West London. It had been sitting wheel-less and on bricks next to a stack of mouldy lampshades and a life-size plastic elephant, the mustard paint peeling away from the VW emblem at the front. Matty hadn’t bothered to haggle. Love at first sight and all that. Some TLC for a couple of weeks, after asking around for a mechanic at the Men’s Pond, got Shifty tarted up enough. You needed a serious muscle to move into third gear – Matty’s left arm had been aching since Watford Gap – and there was the constant, heady smell of the engine, but already it felt like family. A cocoon.

There was plenty of money now. Even as spending money with the rest in the bank. Enough to tour the world a few times over, but for now the world was here. Ireland.