After successfully breaking May out of hospital, Cliffie spends the night with her in an amusement arcade on Brighton pier, where they cause considerable damage, attracting the attention of local gangster Hollister, who seeks money for the repair works.

While on the run, May kidnaps an infant from an unlocked car outside a primary school despite Cliffie’s protests, and they spend the night with the child in a showroom house that is part of a new building development.

Cliffie eventually leaves and breaks into the house May identified, where he finds Ron’s wife Edie having sex with a father and son.

They do not mind Cliffie’s intrusion, and Edie says that she often tells Ron she is out playing bingo while in fact she is having her sexual needs met in the abandoned house.

He is sentenced and sent to prison, where the only thing that keeps him sane is the thought of being reunited with May, who sends him a letter one day to say she is pregnant with Cliffie’s child.

Upon his release from prison, Cliffie goes to confront Hollister over past events, including confusion over the legal ownership of Barry's café.

Finally, Cliffie travels to Dorset to win back May, but finds her happy and settled with Kit, who runs the commune where they live.

[2] A D Reid, in a review for Literary Review, described “Deserters” as “a strangely compelling read” even though “The plot is far from flawless.” He commented on the novels many “vivid and disturbing” episodes and commended its “raw energy.”[3] In his review for The Independent, Christopher Hawtree criticised the way Paling’s “authorial voice keeps creeping into Cliffie[‘s] territory,” but went on to state that “Whatever the faults of the novel's shifting tone, it has something of that distinct view of the world which made one certain that the author of “After the Raid” is among the most accomplished English novelists to emerge in recent years.”[4] In 2000, The Independent’s Nicholas Royce identified "Deserters" as an example of the “sub-genre of entertainingly grim seaside-resort fiction”.