Jack snorted. ‘No. I left all that behind me when I ran.’ He saw something flicker in Ben’s expression. ‘Why? What should I know?’

‘Your mam, Jack,’ Ben proceeded carefully. ‘You’ve heard surely …’

His insides tightened. ‘Heard what?’

‘I’m sorry, lad. Your mam died.’

Jack exhaled through clenched teeth. He wanted to feel something, and he did: guilt that he didn’t feel more. He experienced no blow to his gut, no sadness, no pain in his chest. He had closed his heart to his mother years before – her own behaviour had made certain of that. He saw her in his mind’s eye, wedged into the corner of his sister’s room, the bloody towel in her stained hands: ‘A week of Jenny’s wages she cost me.’

‘How?’ he asked at last, through curiosity more than anything else.

‘Accident. She was drunk, they say … walked in front of a tram.’

‘Aye … that’s about right,’ Jack muttered, remembering how she would stagger out of the pub blind drunk, loud and uncaring, without the wits to keep herself safe.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘So am I,’ he said, though his voice revealed little emotion. ‘But I don’t feel any sorrow.’

‘I always thought you’d come back, you know,’ Ben said quietly.

I couldn’t risk it, you know that. I’ve spent every day of the past five years waiting for my punishment. Jerry’s bullet or the hangman’s noose. I tell you now, I’d rather take the bullet, die like a man.’

Confusion crawled across Ben’s face, but it quickly gave way to shock. ‘My God, you don’t know, do you?’

‘Know what?’

‘About Mickey… Mickey Jones.’ Seeing Jack’s wary expression, Ben swore, the colour draining from his cheeks. ‘Is that why you stayed away?’

‘You know why I stayed away, Ben …’

‘He’s not dead, Jack!’

Ben’s words rang in Jack’s ears. He began to sway, but it was not the undulating motion of the ship that sent him reeling. Ben grabbed his arm.

‘My God, Jack… Mickey Jones is parading around Newcastle saying you did him a favour. He’s all right, like, but the effects of his injuries were enough to have him deemed medically unfit for service. You gave him a pass out of all this and my God he’s grateful for it. He’s got involved in the black market at home – he’s making a packet and acting like the smuggest man in Tyneside right now.’

‘He’s not dead …’ Somehow the words escaped from the fuddle of Jack’s thoughts and made it to his lips. ‘He’s not dead?’ As the magnitude of it all finally hit him, he seized Ben’s arms. ‘Are you telling me that I didn’t kill him?’