Danny rolled his eyes and took a deep drag on his cigarette before barking out my numbers, “Seventy-eight, seventy-nine, eighty.” When I got to one hundred, I switched arms. Danny was working me harder than I’d ever been worked in my entire life, and I loved it. My body loved it. My days ended with a sparring session with Earnshaw. Fucker was getting quicker, but honestly? He couldn’t touch me now. I was the wind. Faster than anyone would believe in a guy my size. I was Ali, I was Tyson, I was Foreman. I was all of the greats, and it made me invincible. There was no one who stood a chance in the ring with me, not even Kieran who was the best sparring partner I’d ever had.

Danny had taken training back to basics, and it was working. Balaam Leisure Center got wind of the fight, and they let me use the pool for an hour every day between their swimming classes. The only condition was that the local kids, although they weren’t allowed in the pool with me, got to watch me do laps. I fucking loved that part of my day. I might have been Irish but I was local and doing something to better myself, and that made me their hero. Those kids worked me harder than Danny ever did. Eventually he gave up giving me orders and let the kids do it. They’d shout at me to go faster for just one more lap. Afterward I ran back to the gym through Canning Town Recreation Ground, and they almost always followed me. A few on the first day and more and more with each day that passed. The older ones ran but the younger ones came on their bikes. Rico Temple couldn’t possibly have anything near the fuckin’ buzz those kids gave me. And people got behind it. The shopkeepers and street cleaners just opening up and doing their jobs knew me from my morning run. Commuters using the railway bridge began to say hello to me on their way home from work. Even the kids from the pool attracted other kids and they hung around outside the gym, often watching me run. Canning Town was a community, and I was their adopted son.

In the afternoons came more bag and leg work. Technique, core training, they were all things we worked on, but in very different ways. While Temple would have used complicated machines, I bench-pressed Em again, which the lads at the gym always seemed to enjoy, and when Danny was grilling me pretty hard about not lifting fast enough, I put her down and used Danny instead, which had the boys in hysterics.

“Put me down, you feckin’ eejit. Right Feckin now!” he screamed at me. After two presses, I did as he asked, then legged it around the gym as he chased me. For an old fucker, he sure was fast. I felt powerful and motivated in the same way I had after I’d walked Em home that first night. Like I could take on the world. Knowing that she was in the office next to me was like always training with your talisman. She worked so fucking hard. Harder than I ever could with all that book-learning stuff. Danny even let Nikki, Ryan, and Albie use the office to study instead of the library. Kieran lent her his laptop as well. Everything the guys could do to make her comfortable, they did. Mary even caught wind of what we were all doing and kept the baked goods in steady supply.

Every day I trained longer, harder, and faster. Tommy got us a tractor tire, fuck knows from where, and once the fight was over, I was gonna fucking burn it. For hours, Danny had me turning that thing over and over, up and down the lane behind the gym. When he’d finished torturing me with that, he had me pounding on it over and over and over with a sledgehammer. Every obstacle was a machine, every movement an exercise. Even the foot bridge up and over the railway track, which had a steep staircase on either side, became our training ground. I lost count of the number of times he’s made me run up and over that bridge. Thousands and thousands of tiny steps and every one of ’em counted.

It was a heady feeling to be a part of something so great. Things were going so well that I didn’t want to leave for the US, and I sure as shit didn’t want to leave Em behind. I was doing hanging sit-ups when she came to find me on our last day together. Just as she walked out of the office, a fresh mug of coffee in her hand, Tommy came running in, grabbed Em by her cheeks, and kissed her loudly on the lips.

“What the fuck…” I said, nearly breaking my leg in my haste to climb down and smack Tommy for getting fresh with my wife. At least that was the plan until he came running over and did exactly the same thing to me. He kissed me. On the motherfucking lips. I should ’ave hit him but I was too bloody shocked to do anything other than stand there. Em giggled happily, probably at the look on my face.

Tommy was like a kid at Christmas, bouncing up and down so much he could barely get his news out. “I did it. I fucking did it,” he screamed, pulling a letter out of his back pocket and waving it at us.

“What is it?” Em asked him.

“I passed the psychometric exams for the fire service. Thick as shit Tommy Rierdan passed the exams!” I couldn’t be more proud of the little fucker.

“That’s so fantastic! Well done, love. I’m so proud of you,” Em told him. I hugged him and squeezed his shoulder as Em jumped on him and hugged him even harder than I had.

Danny and Earnshaw walked out of the office together, and even Danny raised a half smile, half smirk when Tommy told him the news. “You did good, kid. You did real good.” Tommy looked at Danny like he hung the moon. Danny didn’t give praise very often. So when he did, he fucking meant it.

“What does it mean now?” Em asked him.

“It means I get through to the interview stage next. It’s like a tier system, I guess. They start off with thousands of applications, and at each stage, they get rid of a load. If you can make it through the interview, the next stage is the medical and optical. If you can pass those, you’ve got the job.”

“Firefighter Rierdan. Who’d have thought?” I said to no one in particular.

“Don’t jinx me,” he warned me. “There’s a long way to go so I ain’t getting my hopes up yet.”

“Probably sensible,” I told him, as though we hadn’t just seen him jumping around with excitement and screaming like a girl. Earnshaw congratulated Tommy and asked all the right questions about his future with the fire service. By the time he left to share the news with Mary and his da, he looked like he was king of the world.

“Now he’s gone, I can show you this,” said Earnshaw excitedly, pulling his own piece of paper from out of his pocket.

“Why d’you need to wait for Tommy to leave before sharing it?” I asked suspiciously, my tone making him pause.