‘You know something? If I ditch this gig, I’m gonna set up as a therapist. A new kind, specially for people like Aislinn. For a hundred quid an hour, I’ll clatter you across the back of the head and tell you to cop yourself on.’

‘Because she might’ve got herself mixed up with a gang?’

‘I don’t give a shite about that, if it even happened, which you still haven’t convinced me.’ I’m crossing the road fast enough that he has to jog a step or two to keep up; a car whips past inches from our arses. ‘No: because she was twenty-six years old and chasing after Daddy, whining for him to fix everything for her. That’s fucking pathetic.’

‘Come on,’ Steve says, catching up on the footpath. ‘This isn’t some spoilt Daddy’s girl ringing him to change her flat tyre. Aislinn’s dad leaving pretty much defined her life, and not in a good way. We don’t know what she went through; we can’t—’

‘I bleeding do know. My da split before I was even born. Do I look to you like I’m mooning about, dreaming up ways to find him and throw myself into his arms?’

Which shuts Steve up. It shuts me up, too. I didn’t know that was gonna come out of my mouth till I heard it.

After a moment he says, ‘I didn’t realise. You never said.’

‘I never said because it doesn’t matter. That’s my point. He’s gone; gone means irrelevant. End of story.’

Steve says – carefully: he knows he could get hurt here – ‘Are you telling me you never thought about him? Seriously?’