Around this time someone – I’ve never been able to find out who – rang Barry Fox and informed him of a change of plan: instead of going straight to Harry’s, the gang would convene at the Queen’s Inn in Dalkey ‘for a quick one before everyone heads to the ’Rock’.

Barry explained this to Stephen, Richard and the girls, all of whom were very drunk.

‘Cool,’ Richard said. ‘Harry’s will be fucking shit until after eleven, anyway.’

At 7.50 pm Conor Harris left the house in Donnybrook. He had showered and shaved, and gelled his hair. He had debated with his mother about bringing a jacket. By now the warmth of the sun had failed and given way to a gathering evening cool. But you didn’t bring a jacket when you went to Harry’s: the queue for the coat room would be huge, and it cost a fiver to check things in.

Laura Haines had discussed this problem with Clodagh Finnegan as she straightened her hair in Stephen O’Brien’s bathroom. She had brought an extra-large handbag – large enough to contain the star-spangled hoodie that Conor had given her, in case she got cold later on.

It’s safe to say that Conor was experiencing a certain amount of anxiety as he travelled on the number eleven bus into the city centre. The plan was that he and Fergal Morrison would meet Lisa McKeown and her ‘best friend’ – a St Brigid’s girl named Caroline Smyth – in Café en Seine on Dawson Street. Conor was fine with this. But Fergal had mentioned that ‘everyone’ was going to be in Harry’s that night, and that he was keen to join them. ‘Everyone’, to Conor Harris, meant Laura and Richard.

What was the state of Conor’s relationship with Laura Haines on 31 August?

They hadn’t spoken since their meeting outside the Quinn School on 2 August. Conor had been half-expecting a thank-you text from Laura, telling him she loved the hoodie. But she had said nothing, and Conor had had enough time to become embarrassed by his gesture.

There was also the usual anxiety, the inverse of what Richard Culhane felt as he contemplated his beautiful girlfriend in Stephen O’Brien’s massive living room: the anxiety that, whatever happens, you will not be at its centre, that your social supremacy ended with your graduation from secondary school, that your life will never offer such intensity again.

At 8.00 pm (they had stopped at a garage so that Laura could buy smokes), Richard and the boys arrived with their primped and polished girlfriends at the Queen’s Inn.

Barry Fox paid for a round of whiskeys – and a Malibu and orange juice for Clodagh Finnegan.

The beer garden of the Queen’s Inn was full of boys who had gone to Brookfield or Merrion Academy, and girls who had gone to Ailesbury College or St Anne’s. In other words, it was full of the people that Richard Culhane had known for most of his life. Again – although now the feeling was adulterated by drink, and by the mild competitive aggression that always accompanied the social proximity of the graduates of four Dublin rugby schools – Richard felt a familiar complacency.