‘You can’t half belt out a good tune, my girl!’

Harry was no longer paying attention and was instead throwing his arms around a woman who had wedged herself between them. She had some sort of beret on her head and was dressed in some ethnic looking blouse/dress. She wore black leggings, big boots, and a giant scarf wrapped around her neck. As he was all too often prone to do when confronted with strangers, and even though he disliked himself immensely for it, Cormac labelled the intruder. In this instance his labels of choice were: vegetarian, art school, lesbian, middle-class, schoolteacher, protestor, and communist.

She was laughing with Harry.

‘You are biased, Harry Crossan. Are you here on your own?’

Harry let go of her.

‘Oh, forgive my rudeness. I’m here with my good friend Cormac.’

She turned to face him and before she could speak, Cormac instinctively reached for her hand. He looked at her face for the first time and felt his heart leap into his throat and then bounce to his boots. The eyes were unmistakable.

‘Bernadette?’

15

Her hand was gone before he’d finished saying her name. She spun towards Harry.

‘What are you playing at, bringing him here?’

Harry didn’t seem at all concerned. He sipped his Guinness.

‘We’re in Dublin for a couple of days. You know I always come here to hear you sing when I can!’

She seemed very concerned. She grabbed his Guinness and slammed it onto the bar.

‘And you know I would have no desire to see him! Our Roisin will kill you for this. And I hope she does!’

He picked it up again and wiped the bar with a napkin.

‘Look Bernadette, calm yourself down. I’m free to bring him to any pub in Dublin. I don’t have to ask your permission. This is my favourite pub, you are my favourite singer and your sister has more important things on her mind.’

Her tone changed.

‘What things? She’s not ill, is she?’

‘No she’s not ill.’

‘Ah hello … I’m still here!’

As soon as he said it Cormac knew in the circumstances it was a poor turn of phrase.

Bernadette turned her head towards him.

‘No, Cormac, YOU RAN AWAY a lifetime ago!’

He had dreamt of how this conversation would go, if he ever got the chance to have it. He always expected it would be a difficult one, but he naively and secretly hoped part of her would still be pleased to see him after all this time. He thought her justified anger towards him for abandoning her would have been tempered by the passing of time. He hoped other life events would have spread layers of calm over her pain. He studied her and tried to read her face. It was his job, his business, to read faces, to listen for the tone of a voice, to look for clues in other people that would betray their inner feelings. It was a skill he mastered through interrogating hundreds of helpless witnesses in court. A skill he perfected in Parliament. A skill that no matter how much he tried to suppress it, was telling him the woman staring at him was feeling pure and undiluted contempt for him.