“Cup of tea, Tommy?” she asked him and he nodded glumly. She set about making him a cuppa, then settled in next to me as I finished. She knew better than to offer me a hot drink. There was absolutely no caffeine for me now until the fight was over.

“What’s up, lovely?” Em asked him.

“Do you know what I’ve always wanted to be, ever since I was a little kid?” Tommy asked me.

“Taller?” I responded, laughing at my own joke. Tom gave me an evil look, and Em smacked my arm.

“A fireman,” Em told me.

“No shit really? How do you know that?” I asked her.

“Because he told me,” she explained patiently.

“Well, since you’ve taken up the boxing full-time and you and Kier stopped the partying and shit, I decided to take a chance and fill out a fire service application,” he said.

“Is that why you’re looking so glum then? Because you didn’t get through? Don’t beat yourself up over it. I hear they have thousands of applications for every place,” I consoled him.

“That’s just it,” he said, still looking a little stunned. “Out of all those applications, they’ve picked mine to go through to the next round, but look at me, they’re never gonna let someone like me be a firefighter. Somehow being one step closer to getting what I always wanted is worse than never having a chance at all. Em, I need your help!”

Chapter 12

“I’d love to help Tommy but I don’t know how I can,” Em admitted.

“The next stage of the process is an exam which is kind of like a psychometric test. I managed to get some past papers off the internet, and it’s frying my brain. I was shit in school, and I’m shit at all this book-learning stuff, but I know I’d make a fucking amazing firefighter.” I don’t remember Tom ever mentioning anything to do with the fire service to me. I honestly thought he was happy ticking along as a plumber like his old man. That he had the motivation to fill out a fire service application stunned me, and I realized how badly I’d underestimated him. I wondered if Kier knew anything about this.

“Of course I can help,” Sunshine told him, looking at the fire service letter he’d handed her and over all the past test papers.

“A lot of these questions are just a matter of common sense. You have to get used to reading the questions quickly and accurately, making a decision about your answer, and moving on to the next one without panicking. There’s also a technique in working out how much time you can afford to spend on any one question. We can go over some papers until you feel comfortable with your answers, then we’ll have a go at them under test conditions.”

Tommy smiled, looking like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. “I knew you’d know what to do,” he told her, making her blush. Even from someone she knew as well as Tommy, she still wasn’t good at accepting compliments.

“Why don’t we get started tomorrow?” Em suggested. “I’ve got classes until five p.m., but if you can meet me later in the evening, we can make a start.”

“I should be able to meet you by five-fifteen. We can do it in the library by your school, can’t we? Or will they kick people like me out?” he asked seriously, making Em giggle.

“I don’t know what you mean by ‘people like you’ but no, they won’t kick you out. Education is for everyone with a thirst for knowledge, Tommy.”

“I just figured, you know, with the tattoos and all, that I wouldn’t be welcome in a place like that.”

“Dr. Matt Taylor led the Rosetta project to land a probe on a comet for the first time, and he’s covered in tattoos. If the European Space Agency will let him do that, I’m pretty sure the maths department at UCL can handle you using the library to study.”

“No shit, really?” he said, pulling out his phone. No doubt to see if Em was right about this doctor guy. I didn’t know his name but I was pretty sure Sunshine was right. I wouldn’t put it past her to make up shite to help Tommy feel better, but she made me watch the news now—something I never did before—and I do remember her getting excited about the Rosetta thing and the bloke with all the tats. The enormous, shitty-looking clock on the wall of our kitchenette counted down the minutes before I had to leave for the gym. Both of us hated the clock but it hid a patch of mold on the wall that we hated even more. A part of me was itching to get between the ropes but the other part of me knew what this fight meant. It was the fight of my career, and it meant relentless, backbreaking training that would take me away from my girl every day for months. Sunshine made me soft, and I couldn’t afford soft. Today was the day I went to work. Em looked at the clock the same time I did and knew what it meant.

“It’s not forever you know,” she told me, holding the door open for me to leave.

“Hold up, I’ll walk with you,” Tommy told me as he gathered up his stuff. Reaching for her, I threaded my fingers through her silky soft hair and pulled her toward me for a kiss.

“I just want to make sure you’re okay,” I admitted to her.

“I’m fine,” she reassured me. “I’ll get to come and watch you train when I’m not in class, and I’ll miss you over the next few months, baby, but this is life-changing. You’ve got an opportunity to show what I, Danny, and every one of your brothers know. That you are the best fighter this country has ever seen. And when you’re done, I’ll still be here. The woman you get to grow old with when all the fight is gone.”

“I’m Irish, love. That fight will never be gone, but I promised myself once that I would conquer the world for you, and that’s what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna be a legend, and when they ask me how I did it, I’m gonna tell them it was all you.”

“I love you,” she told me with tears in her eyes.

“Love you too, Mrs. O’Connell.”

“For fuck’s sake. You love him. He loves you. We all love each other. Can we go now? We’re only going to the fucking gym, you know. He’ll be back tonight.” Em rolled her eyes at Tommy’s interruption but I knew why he’d done it. I ragged on Tommy a whole lot, but he worshipped my wife. Loved her like family and would lay down his life for her. He knew that no matter how much she put a brave face on it, the next few months would be hard on her, on all of us. I needed Tom to keep her safe, to keep her cheerful, to be her friend.