The truth was there wasn’t a lot he was interested in at the moment. He couldn’t stop thinking about Lyssa for long enough. They were pussyfooting around each other as if they were embarrassed strangers and he had no idea how to break the impasse they seemed to have reached. Every time he tried to talk to Lyssa, she bolted out of the room, or if he cornered her for long enough to splutter out a sentence, it came out so, so wrong that he wished he hadn’t bothered.

‘Gentlemen,’ Pip said, clenching his teeth round his cigar. ‘Time to lose all of your money.’

Jake, Aidan, Max and Dan shuffled their garden chairs until they were cosily ensconced round the table.

Pip rubbed his hands together and then flexed his fingers, cracking each of them in turn. ‘Time to show your cash,’ Pip said.

Each man pulled out a bulging bag of pennies and put it on the table. Once upon a time they used to play for big money, serious money. When they were all young, free and single they’d think nothing of blowing five hundred quid or a grand in a night, more sometimes—if they were particularly drunk. But now, apart from Jake and Pip, all the guys were sprogged up and paying out for heavy, heavy mortgages, so the stakes had become suitably more modest. It was hardly Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels territory, Jake thought. If only he’d been as cautious in gambling with other areas of his life.

Aidan’s thirteen-year-old son, Ethan, acted as barman for the night—until it was his bedtime. Ethan was already wise enough to charge them each ten pence every time he was called from the kitchen to bring them another cold beer. Sometimes Jake’s £1.20 bar bill he’d racked up wasn’t even covered by his winnings. But it wasn’t about winning, it was about taking part. He normally loved the camaraderie, the tantrums, sometimes the tears, the threat of a beered-up brawl. Tonight he didn’t want camaraderie. He didn’t want to be in Aidan’s garage. Jake wanted to be at home in his own garage with his own wife who hated cigar smoke and his own thirteen-year-old son whom he could press into eager slavery. He wanted more than anything else—even winning the cigar competition—to be middle-class, married and a man with a future.

‘Five pences in the pot, gentlemen,’ Pip said. The others all shuffled forward keenly and they tossed their money into the middle of the table. ‘House rules—aces high, two low pairs beat a high pair, minimum stake ten pence, ten pence to change your cards, no fisticuffs, no IOUs, no offering to throw in your wives or girlfriends in lieu of your debts, the dealer’s decision is final!’