Not that he’d say all of this. If he blurted everything out, and his dad didn’t understand, he’d be making a bad situation worse. No, he’d have to talk around his problems and hope his father appreciated what he was saying. He’d considered confiding in a colleague, then concluded he couldn’t take the risk. In the station, they were all bravado and bluster. They’d tell dark jokes about the people they arrested and the situations they encountered, yet there was a lack of honesty about their conversations. Nobody ever admitted to feeling down or unable to cope. They complained about lazy colleagues while skirting around the fact that some of their fellow guards were out-and-out gangsters, who got their kicks from stepping over the line. When locals were bullied and harassed, they looked the other way. Without a word being said, Conor had learned that loyalty to colleagues was prized above all else. Avoiding unnecessary hassle came next. Tackling crime was a long way down the list.

With his girlfriend, too, he kept up a front. Angela was a nurse in an Accident and Emergency ward, her job even more challenging than his. He wasn’t in love – and he hoped she wasn’t either – but they had a laugh together, and a laugh was what he needed.

He would have liked to speak to Tess, but she was so wrapped up in her new life, he didn’t think she’d have time for his concerns.

Once, he would have spoken to Tom. Conor liked Tom; only an unreasonable person wouldn’t. But after that weekend in London their friendship had never been the same. He suspected that Tom still hadn’t forgiven him for joining the guards. They could go out on the beer or watch a match, but something had shifted.

Conor found his dad and Ginny in the sitting room, watching the news. The room was dark, the atmosphere sombre as a funeral home. Either they were seriously concerned about the coup in the Soviet Union or something was wrong. He told himself not to rush to conclusions. A few weeks previously, he’d worried that his dad was ill when, in fact, Flan had been priming himself to deliver good news. Still, Ginny appeared to have more than Mikhail Gorbachev on her mind. Obviously pregnant now, she looked about as far from blooming as he could imagine. Shrivelling would have been a more appropriate word.

‘Hi … Conor,’ she said, as though she had trouble recalling his name.

Neither did his father have many spare words. ‘Journey okay?’ He asked Conor to go out to the kitchen and put on a pot of tea.

‘No tea for me, thanks,’ said Ginny, rising from the sofa. ‘I think I’ll go for a lie-down.’

‘Is—’ started Conor, who was beginning to realise that his own issues would have to wait.