Just once in her life she shot a gun, when she was in the Venture Scouts, aged 16. It was at the Thiepval Barracks a few months before she took her GCSEs. The army must have been trying to recruit them or something. As if. The army guy, who’d shown her how to shoot the gun, looked like Travis Bickle prior to the mohawk. She’d fancied him slightly. They didn’t converse.