His good intentions, when he showed them, always had a faulty seam, like every knock-off pair of stockings that she’d ever bought. The flat he’d ‘sorted out’ for her on Kingsley Road had been her first real measure of this fact. On the afternoon they’d gone to look at it, the skinny tenant who was living there had answered in his tatty woollen vest – there’d been a yellow swelling round his eye, a sling over his elbow, and he’d cowered at the sight of them: ‘Oh heck. I’m sorry, Mal, I hope you’ve not been waiting long. I didn’t hear a knock – my ear’s been giving me some gyp.’ She should’ve read her fortune in that man’s behaviour. Instead, she’d moved into his flat, repainted all the walls and skirting boards, and thought she’d scrubbed him out of memory. She’d been very pleased when Mal had driven over with a vanload of good furniture he claimed was second-hand, and she’d arranged those new belongings with a sense of pride in her adulthood. Before they’d lugged it up the stairs, she’d never known that such a thing existed as a pull-out sofa bed, but it became a fixture in her life. With every gift like this that she accepted, she was deepening her debt. In time, the noises of that sofa bed would turn her stomach.

There were skills she’d learned from him that she would not forget – in that sense, he achieved more than her teachers ever could. Except when Mal passed down his knowledge, it was always with a view towards the benefits. So yes, he might’ve shown her how to drive by doing circuits in an empty car park till the wheels stopped bouncing; and he might’ve introduced her to the game of euchre and explained its strategies; and he might’ve given her a rundown of the boxing moves he’d picked up in the army; but his real purpose would be borne out later and seem accidental. That’s how she became the driver on his so-called ‘missions’, scouting hotels in the country, sitting lookout for him, ferrying him home in darkness. That’s how he prepared her for those Thursday nights down at the pub with factory women, cheating them at euchre for ‘a bit of petrol money’. That’s how he persuaded her to keep on practising her jab-jab-cross and other combinations while he pressed his crotch against her from behind and held her arms. She’d had no possible excuse to shut the door when he appeared one night in the small hours, saying he’d be sleeping on the pull-out for a while until a ‘little disagreement’ with his landlord had blown over. And once she’d let him in, he’d taken up residence.

Mal Duggan wasn’t dim: he’d waited a long while before he’d laid a hand on her. First of all, he’d got her used to staying up past midnight with him, swigging from his Pusser’s bottle, listening to jazz band records on the radiogram he’d brought in on her birthday saying, ‘Nightio, my girl,’ as she’d gone off to sleep in her own room. Then he’d made sure she invited Charlie for his visits, so her brother would take up her bed and she would have to share the pull-out. Two weekends had passed without a touch; they’d both slept fully clothed, with towels and a dressing gown rolled up between them. On the third, she’d had a head full of Jamaica rum, and felt the mattress shift, his fingers drawing up her skirt. ‘Shhh, don’t wake the lad,’ he’d told her. ‘I’ll be gentle.’ And he’d climbed on top of her and peeled her knickers off.