“Da-ad.” She was smiling reluctantly now.

“What?”

“It’s embarrassing when you talk like that.”

“Where do you fancy going? The world’s our oyster.”

“Can we go to the seaside?”

“Well, not quite that far, pet. It’s work and school tomorrow.” Her face fell. “But we could go to the pictures? And then McDonald’s for tea?”

“It’s just I was thinking we could go swimming,” she said.

“Okay, we can go swimming. We’ll pick up our gear and go to the pool.”

“No, I meant outside swimming.”

“We’ll go to an outside swimming pool.”

“There aren’t any outside swimming pools. Are there?”

“Course there are.” The nurse was smiling a little and holding out Alicia’s bag and coat. “We’ll find one. And we’ll freeze ourselves to – we’ll get really cold, then we’ll get a greasy fry-up in a café for tea. Okay?”

His calm was a façade. His shoulders were tense. He wanted to know what had upset her, in the middle of a lesson about how plants grow. He wanted to kill someone.

“Bit of excitement at The Croc yesterday.” Ricky, swaggering a little, fingers in his belt-loops, absurd but somehow commanding the room.

“Heard it got messy.” Sean, the bloke he’d heard gossiping with Ricky in the bogs.

“We handled it. The Brixton boys got the message.” Ricky inspected his fingernails, and glanced at Donald, a sly challenging look. “Been coming a while.”

“Fair enough,” said Donald, turning the page of his newspaper.

“You ask me,” said Ricky, “it needed handling a while ago.”

“Ah,” said Donald, nodding.

“All this light-touch stuff,” said Ricky, looking at Donald directly now, trying to catch his eye. “That’s had its day, that has.”

The room began to subtly rearrange itself, everyone getting ready for a fight. Donald was heartened to see that most of the movement was in his direction. The lads still had his back. Or maybe they were just enjoying the show?

“You might be right,” said Donald.

“Time for some new blood, maybe,” said Ricky.

“New blood’s always useful.” Donald turned another page, then looked right at Ricky and bared his teeth. “If you’re looking for a transfer, Ricky lad, I could give you some tips. Work hard and stay focused and in a couple of years, you might be ready to come and work for me.”

A moment while the words sank in, and then laughter and a scattering of respectful applause. Donald resisted the urge to take a bow, and instead turned back to his paper. Just play it cool, boy… he’d heard that advice in a song years ago. Ricky was visibly struggling to keep the lid on, but managed not to storm out. Instead he smiled and joined in the applause, acknowledging the massive slap Donald had administered, then sat down and flipped through the girlie calendar on the table.

Shouldn’t have done that, Donald thought. Now I’ve let him know we’re enemies. A few years ago, he would have relished the fight. Now all he felt was a huge weariness, a creeping disgust at these stupid jostlings for power.