Tom had brought them to the Eagle and Serpent because he’d wanted a night away from the pub where he worked. The Sheaf of Wheat was a grand spot, but you had to be in the humour for it. It was glued together by decades of nicotine and grease, and the head barman insisted on playing The Wolfe Tones and other Irish ballad groups on a scratchy loop. The customers were glassy-eyed, mossy-teethed Irish men. Many of them were obsessed with home, a place that was an hour away and a million miles away. Although younger Irish guys sometimes came in for a drink, there was something uncomfortable about their presence. In jarring voices, they spoke about their office jobs, their English girlfriends and their Ryanair flights from Luton to Dublin. ‘Fine, we get it,’ Tom wanted to say. ‘You’re not like the old lads.’ No doubt the same guys spent their Saturday nights in the National Ballroom in Kilburn where they got legless and sang along to ‘Four Country Roads’, all the while telling themselves they were behaving in an ironic way.

That being said, the punters in the Eagle were annoying Tom too. And what was with the music? Was it possible to find a pub in London where your words weren’t drowned out by the pounding of the sound system? If he never heard Rick Astley again, it would be too soon. Why didn’t Londoners understand that bars were for drinking and talking, not for putting up with someone else’s taste in music?

He knew he was being ratty, but he couldn’t help himself. Conor’s announcement had plunged him into bad form. They were young. They weren’t like their parents. They could go anywhere. Be anyone. They could try on different lives to see what suited them. And what did Conor do? He joined the cops, like his father before him. What had he to look forward to now? He’d be stationed in some kip of a village or in a godforsaken Dublin suburb where kids in stolen cars would try to run him down and junkies would threaten him with syringes of infected blood. Oh, Tom knew he was exaggerating. He knew he wasn’t being fair. But fairness would have to wait for another day.

They’d spent the afternoon in the sweltering heat at Highbury, watching Liverpool beat Arsenal, Conor as upbeat as Tom had ever seen him. He’d tried to be pleased for his friend. He just didn’t have it in him.

Say what you like about Tess, she had the right attitude. She knew how to be young. As crazy as he was about Nina, she was so damn cautious. Take the way she fretted about Tess. ‘She needs to get a proper job,’ Nina would say. ‘She needs a plan.’ They were eighteen. What did any of them want with a plan?