Patrick looks as if he hasn’t slept at all. His eyes are on the road, but Chloe can see from the passenger seat that they are bloodshot. His hands grip the steering wheel, his knuckles white.

Chloe has never been in his car before. She looks around; the cigarette lighter is missing, there are a couple of holes in the upholstery, new car mats that he’s added in the footwell. In the back, something lies across the seat, covered by a sheet. She’s grateful suddenly of an opening to break the silence.

‘What’s that?’ she asks him.

He casts a glance into the back of the car via the rear-view mirror.

He turns to her. ‘You really want to know?’

She nods.

‘I can tell you,’ he says, ‘but you won’t like it.’

Chloe pushes herself up a little in her seat.

‘And you mustn’t tell Maureen,’ he says.

She turns around, and then she sees the long, slim shape of it.

‘It’s a gun,’ Patrick says. ‘Not that Maureen knows I’ve got it, and she must never know. She hates anything like that, she gets the wrong idea.’

‘Why have you got it?’ Chloe asks, twisting her fingers awkwardly in her lap.

‘I’m taking it in to be serviced,’ he says. ‘Oh, don’t worry, I’ve got a licence for the thing.’

She glances back at it, sleeping on the seat.

‘But why do you need one? And why doesn’t Maureen know you have it?’

‘Rabbits,’ he says.

The car slows to a halt. They’re sitting in traffic now, waiting behind a lorry which is turning right across the single carriageway. He takes his hands off the steering wheel and mimes shooting a shotgun through the windscreen.

‘It’s a bit of fun really, but Maureen don’t see it like that. There’s a farmer I know, next place on from Low Drove, he lets me shoot on his land. Works for both of us, see? I get to shoot, he gets rid of the rabbits.’

Chloe eyes Patrick through her fringe. It sounds harmless to her – well, not to the rabbits. Why would Maureen care?

‘She feels sorry for them,’ Patrick says, as if reading her thoughts. He rolls his eyes. ‘But they’re vermin, pests, ask any farmer out here.’

Chloe nods, and looks back over her shoulder.

‘How long have you had it?’ she asks.

‘Now let me think,’ Patrick says, sucking his teeth. ‘Near on forty years. It was my eighteenth birthday present from my dad.’

‘And it still works?’

‘Oh, yes. Like I say, if you look after them . . .’

‘And Maureen has no idea?’

‘She thought I got rid of it when . . . well, when Angie was little, like.’