‘It’s not loaded,’ he told her, feeling the fear in her. ‘It’s strange, isn’t it? The first time you hold it. Like it’s going to suddenly go off in your hands, or as if, just by holding it, you’re going to suddenly tap into some bloodlust you didn’t know you had.’

‘Yes!’ she laughed. The weed had made her sleepy, but now she felt suddenly awake, everything impacting on her like she was seeing the world with fresh eyes.

‘I like how it feels,’ she told him. ‘It makes me feel powerful.’

‘Steady on,’ he laughed, taking it from her hands.

With ease and swiftness, he popped open the barrel, showed her where the bullets went, briefly described how to load it and discharge a round. He clipped it shut, then spun the barrel.

‘Have you ever fired it? Like, for real?’

‘Nah. Not this one. But I have shot a gun before.’

‘You have?’

‘Last year, in the States. We were on holiday and Dad took me to a shooting range for the afternoon. Just the two of us.’

He held the gun up to the light, cast his eye closely along the stock.

‘What was it like?’

‘Pretty fucking cool, actually. I wish I could take this baby out some time. Not to shoot anyone, obviously! But like, to a gun range or something. Somewhere I could try it out safely.’

‘Does your dad know you mess around with it?’ She nodded to the gun, and he slid her a mischievous look.

‘Course not. He’d have my nuts if he knew I was doing this. He thinks I don’t know he has a gun, let alone the combination to the gun safe.’

‘So why do you do it? Take it out, show it to people. Aren’t you worried he’ll find out?’

‘Part of me wants him to find out, just to see what the fucker would do, you know?’ He tried to smile, but it died on his lips.

The air between them grew quiet and serious.

Testing the silence, Beth said softly: ‘Lisa told me that your dad hits you.’

‘She told you that?’

She nodded, watching him absorb that for a moment, and then he looked at her, his eyes clear and glassy blue. ‘Do you know what I was thinking this evening, just before you came over?’

She waited.

‘I was thinking what it would be like for him to come home from Mount Juliet and find me out here with a bullet in my brain.’

It shocked her to hear him say it, his voice hoarse with sudden emotion. She thought of him back in the house, on his own watching the telly on mute, the airlessness of the room, the eerie quiet. Something desolate about it, and horribly lonely. Like he’d been abandoned.

‘You wouldn’t …’

‘No,’ he said, gulping back the tears. ‘Too fucking gutless,’ laughing mirthlessly at his own cowardice.