‘Because your parents would want to know what I was doing here in the middle of the week. They’d probably want to call my parents, and if they found out I was here they’d never let me leave the house again.’

Eddie stuffed his hands into the pockets of his hoodie and kicked an empty beer can. It shot across the terminal and landed with a clang that echoed around the room. He looked at John, wondered if he should ask, decided he probably shouldn’t, but then went ahead and asked anyway. ‘Why are you here?’

‘Because if I stayed in that house any longer, I’d go crazy and murder my family with an axe,’ John said, with a wry smile. ‘My parents are doing my head in, that’s all. Dad’s at work all the time, and when he does come home, he just sits in front of the TV like a robot. And Mum is just so fake I can’t even stand it. She goes on and on about how important it is that I study and get into a good uni, when she never made it past high school.’

‘I like your mum,’ Eddie said. ‘She’s nice.’

Eddie had been to John’s holiday house a handful of times during the summer, and Pam had always been good to him. She even marked his height against the wall of their living room, alongside John and his cousins.

‘Yeah, but she’s only nice because she has to be,’ John said. ‘Because the Bible tells her to. That’s what I never get about Catholics. If we’re just doing things because we’re scared of God, then it shouldn’t really count. Anyway, she wouldn’t be so nice if she knew where I was.’

‘Belport?’

‘A fag meet-up joint,’ John said. ‘You know what the Bible says about being gay?’

‘If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both have committed an abomination,’ Eddie said, quoting Leviticus.

John raised his eyebrows. ‘How do you know that?’

‘I looked it up at the school library.’

‘Why?’

‘I was curious,’ he said. ‘You know what else the Bible says you’re not meant to do? Wear torn clothes, get a tattoo, eat bacon…’

John laughed. ‘Eat bacon? You made that one up.’

‘You can’t eat a pig or touch its carcass because it doesn’t chew cud, or something.’

‘That’s completely mental,’ John said. ‘How come you know so much about religion when your parents aren’t religious?’

Eddie gave his ear a tug and shrugged. ‘Maybe that’s why. We were never taught about God and heaven and all that stuff, so I guess I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. So, what do you think?’

‘What do I think about what?’

‘You think God sends gay people to hell?’