‘Well, anyway. You’re not around day to day, so I wouldn’t expect you to understand the dynamics here,’ he says, hoping the deflection will be enough, but still wincing as he says it. It isn’t fair. She didn’t ask for this. He rubs at his eyes.

‘Well – hang on just a seco–’ Maria says, but he’s already making his excuses, feigning an emergency, saying a hurried goodbye, feeling like a tosser.

This is all such a fucking bodge job. How long can he keep papering over things?

But he’s decided what to do and so he scrawls his mother’s signature before he can convince himself otherwise. It’s barely an approximation of it, but it doesn’t seem to matter. Who would even check? He holds up the document to the light. Shit. He could at least have used a different pen to the one he signed with.

He only needs Cathy and Frannie to sign it now. He hopes Cathy will just do it without quibbling. What if she doesn’t? He knows he’s being irrational, but he can’t help it. They’re each so reliant on the others …

He goes out into reception, unable to wait, sweating around his hairline, but finds Evan instead of Cathy, seeing out a giant house rabbit in a box, with what looks like an ear infection – the fur around it is sticky. ‘Got a sec?’ Joe says, gesturing into his consultation room.

‘What can I do you for?’ Evan says, the same twisted phrase he always uses, and Joe bites his tongue. If Joe is a tosser, then at least Evan is a cunt.

‘It’s all here,’ he says recklessly, even though it isn’t signed. He gestures to Evan. ‘Twenty per cent of the business sound reasonable.’

‘Sounds great,’ Evan says.

He takes the single sheet of paper that transfers Joe’s business, sold off gratis, to him. Just like that.

‘Joe,’ he says. There’s a laugh in his voice, though it isn’t a friendly one. It’s a powerful laugh. He can hardly believe his fucking luck.

‘I’m happy to extend an offer of partnership to you,’ Joe says. He was never a good negotiator. Too hot-headed. Always laid his cards straight out on the table. Maybe he should have started at ten per cent.

‘I’m happy to accept,’ Evan says, and, despite himself, Joe is relieved. It’s for the best.

He reaches for the lid of the dog-treats jar and fiddles with the glass stopper on the top.

‘And if you … if you renege,’ Joe says. ‘You know what? What we’re doing here is illegal.’ He thought about it last night. Nobody would shop somebody for murder if they themselves would get sent down for blackmail.

‘Right,’ Evan says, another laugh in his voice. It is being laughed at that angers Joe more than anything else. On the football field, at work and now too, it seems, in situations he never, ever thought he’d be in. ‘Sure,’ Evan adds.

It’s the sure that does it.