‘Yeah, yeah.’ He reaches for his whisky and necks it. ‘So I wasn’t surprised when Billy came round my house one Sunday and said that his dad was a dick. He said Mark was coming down hard on him for doing badly at school. But then he started going on about how weak Mark was and how he had no respect for him.’ He scratches the back of his neck. ‘He said he was embarrassed by him.’

‘Embarrassed? Why?’

He reaches for his empty whisky glass and raises it to his lips. A single drip trickles into his mouth. ‘Because of what he saw.’

I don’t like the way this conversation is going. I want to leave. I want to walk out of the pub before Stephen can say another word but I force myself to stay in my seat. ‘Go on.’

‘Billy went to the pub one night. It was some time last summer. He was meeting a mate who was going to smuggle a couple of bottles out so they could get pissed in the park. Billy spotted Mark and some of his teachers from school in the pub and he hid behind a skip so they wouldn’t see him.’

‘Mark was with Billy’s teachers?’

‘No. He was by himself. Anyway, he came out to take a call. It was his boss, Billy said. Mark sounded really pissed and he was trying to keep the conversation light-hearted but then he started pleading.’

‘What for?’

‘His job. Mark was saying that John had had a heart attack and he thought he was going to die and that was the reason he hadn’t been meeting his targets, and that he was sorry. He begged his boss not to fire him. He said he had a wife and two kids to support and a mortgage to pay.’

I stare at him in horror. Mark’s boss nearly fired him and he didn’t tell me?

‘That’s not the worst of it,’ Stephen says, misinterpreting the expression on my face. ‘Mark started to cry then. Really blubbed down the phone to his boss, apparently. Billy said he’d never been so embarrassed in his life, listening to his dad sobbing down the phone. He said his dad was a hypocrite for the way he’d laid into Billy about the trouble he’d got into at school. His dad acted like he was the big “I am”, like he was this strong, respectable pillar of the community that his sons should look up to, when really he was weak and spineless. A snivelling little shit, Billy said. He told me he couldn’t respect a man like that – a man who’d rather beg than tell his boss to fuck off. According to Billy, Mark was still crying when he went back into the pub. That’s when one of his teachers went over to him and he kissed her.’

‘Mark kissed Edie Christian?’