Vernon clenched his fist. He joined his friend in looking at the grave. Eventually he said, ‘And?’

‘He’s not looking good, mate.’

‘What do you mean he’s not looking good?’

‘You know how we take the choir out to the prison and sing a few carols round Christmas? Thought we’d do likewise for Easter this year, with a few hymns. So we went and sang. I kept an eye out for him but didn’t see him. And some of the guards told me he wasn’t good when I asked. So I went looking for him while we were on a break. They had him in the hospital bit.’

Vernon didn’t move an inch.

‘Well,’ continued Kelly, ‘he was banged up. Pretty bad. Had a dark bruise around his throat, like he’d been choked. Or tried hanging himself.’

‘He deserves what he gets.’

Agony. Saying it. What he’d told himself he had to believe. Why he hadn’t been out there to see his boy. Or help him. This was him helping, wasn’t it? This discipline, this punishment. Let his son feel the weight of his crime. The pelican in the story letting those kids of hers grow up not being able to fend for themselves. Weakness. Mollycoddling. What would happen when she was dead, when they’d taken too much from her? They’d struggle, they’d die. His son would learn. His son would come good out of this. Such a rotten mess, though, the whole thing.

‘You don’t mean that, mate.’

Vernon looked away. ‘I bloody do.’

Kelly sighed. ‘Anyway, just thought you should know. He could probably do with a visit from you. Or Penelope. Or both of you.’

Vernon turned to regard his friend once more. ‘We don’t visit him. When he’s done in there he’s done and he can come back and be whatever he wants to be, but we’re not visiting him in there. He can bloody suffer for what he did and make amends for it that way. God knows, he won’t do it out here.’

Kelly put his beer beside his chair and stood. He walked over to Vernon, sat on his haunches and in an act of intimacy put both hands on Vernon’s hands. ‘You have a think about what you just said to me. You have a think about all the things you’ve done in your life, and what it was like for you and your dad, and put yourself in your boy’s position. I’m not going to preach scripture to you, ’cause I know you hate it, but you just think what it’d be like for you if you were in there and what you’d do to make amends. And have a think about what it’ll be like for you when you’re dying and this is how you did this.’

‘Bloody alright. Get off me.’

Kelly went back to his chair and sipped at his beer. ‘You have a think.’

‘Get all bloody girly on me, mate.’

‘You think about what you said.’