Then she said, ‘I used to go to these parties when I was in school. This is like, fifth or sixth year. And all the guys would take turns punching each other in the face. They had a name for it. It was called, like, the Punch-Face game.’

‘Was it a fight?’

‘They weren’t fighting. It was some game they’d invented. One of them would punch the other in the face as hard as he could. Then the other guy would punch the next guy in the face as hard as he could. And so on around the room.’

‘Then what did they do?’

‘They compared bruises.’

‘Were they being macho? Were they showing off for the girls?’

‘No. You don’t get it. It was just what they did.’

‘Did Richard ever play this game?’

‘Yeah. But this was before we started going out. Once he got this black eye that lasted for, like, two weeks. It turned totally yellow and then he had to tell his mum where he’d got it.’

‘And how did you feel about that? About Richard playing the punching game?’

Laura shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter how I felt about it. It doesn’t matter how I feel about anything. It just matters that it happened. And that’s what you have to deal with.’

49

On a Tuesday morning, just before his trial was due to start, Richard Culhane drove to an ATM in Sandycove and withdrew six hundred euro, the maximum that could be withdrawn in a 24-hour period, from his student bank account. Then he drove out to the airport.

It was 7 am. Richard stood in the middle of the long check-in area and looked up at the Departures board. He had wanted to go to America, but he knew the flight would be too expensive. It was a pity. America was a familiar quantity. He would know what to expect there. But it would be too expensive and he would only be able to get a ninety-day tourist visa.

That morning he had gone into Katherine’s bedroom and taken his passport from the safe in his mother’s wardrobe.

He had formulated no plan that would take him beyond the drive to the airport. But there was a bleak nobility, he thought, in driving along the half-empty motorway in his small car, a hastily packed Brookfield sports bag beside him on the passenger seat.

He looked up at the Departures board.

London, Paris, Milan.

A police warning would probably come up when they scanned his passport. He was awaiting trial. The gardaí had told him not to leave the country.

Leaving the country without telling anyone was the nearest Richard could come to committing suicide.

He couldn’t commit suicide, of course. He believed it was a sin.

Malaga, Montreal, Birmingham.

It was also possible that he would be recognized. His picture had been on TV and in the papers a lot over the last few days. He was surprised to find that fame felt like being contaminated. But he wasn’t famous, was he? He was something else.