‘Nonsense,’ Joe said, picking up a boxing glove from the floor. He took off his jacket and slipped the glove over his right hand, clenched his fist and lunged at the punching bag hanging from the beam. The force jarred his wrist. Joe swung his left arm, bare knuckles into the bag so the canvas scraped the skin. Right, left. Right, left. Dancing back, light on the toes, pummelling hard, hard, hard. He could feel the sweat building up, the adrenalin surging. He knew the damage it could do, a boxer’s fracture or a sprained thumb, twisted joints or tissue damage. Boxing had helped him before. Why shouldn’t it help him now? The agony would kick in later as he lay in bed at night, releasing the hurt within, as if the tortures of his flesh could soothe the lash of his conscience.

‘And Sister Benigna said you broke down at mass this morning,’ Pierre went on.

Joe saw Trude’s face in every woman he passed, heard her song-thrush laughter in every breeze and felt her gentle hands stroke his own. He had begun to smell her in the convent chapel, the clean, starched apron scent of her as he said mass and took the chalice and wiped it clean with the veil.

The bag went still as Pierre grabbed the sides and steadied it. ‘She says you’re not yourself. You’re moody. Silent.’

Joe knelt down by one of the benches, sweeping his hand underneath. All manner of stuff found its home there. Gumshields. Socks. Shoelaces.

‘What’s going on?’

Joe wasn’t sure himself what was going on, except that at night when he was alone he thought of Trude and felt his flesh ripple and his mouth go dry.

But he’d taken his vows and he couldn’t see how to cast them off, even though they’d never fitted properly. He needed Trude, needed to talk to her. She would understand. She had precipitated this. Yes, that was the right word. Precipitate, as if he was standing on the edge of an abyss. She said she’d make him whole but instead she’d opened up a chasm inside him, a pit so deep he could see neither the bottom nor the way out, could feel only the vertigo of confusion, the demon that said, jump, jump.

But she had gone. No word sent, even though he waited for her day after day. For sure, something terrible had happened.

‘Nothing,’ Joe said. ‘Nothing’s going on.’

It seemed he had been forsaken by her, though it was a blasphemy to use those words.