The Harrises loved their son. I can’t make that clear enough. They loved Conor more than I can easily express. But they were parents. What else do parents do?

They loved their son. That’s why they were so angry when he died and no one seemed willing to shoulder the blame.

13

Once – just once – I had coffee with Laura Haines and two of her friends from Ailesbury College. The friends were called Elaina Ross and Rebecca Dowling. We sat outside Café Moda in Rathmines one morning in February, 2004. I felt the privileged awkwardness of being the only boy at a table of rich young women.

Elaina was blonde and thin. She studied Business at Trinity. Rebecca studied Psychology at UCD. Rebecca was one of those comparatively fat, plain girls who act as crutches for their pretty, blonde best friend.

I was struck by how little Laura contributed to the conversation. But she did announce that she had met a new boy. With characteristic modesty she refrained from mentioning that it was Richard Culhane.

Even at the time I found this odd. I was aware that Laura already knew Richard Culhane, because I had seen him pick her up from outside Simmonscourt Pavilion the previous summer.

I didn’t know why she would lie about having just met him.

Of all the people in this story, Laura’s motivations are the most opaque. Her role in the events that led to Conor’s death barely made the papers. I found this odd, too, because she had been the love of Conor’s life for the guts of a year. But the papers had their own ideas about Conor’s death. It was an indictment of our binge-drinking culture. It was prosperity gone mad. It was a family tragedy. It was all of the above.

I don’t think Laura is to blame for Conor’s death. But I do think she had more to do with it than the certain sections of the media have chosen to acknowledge.

Laura’s role is a strange one. I’m still not clear about it myself.

But I was there when Laura first mentioned that she had found a new boyfriend. She mentioned it obliquely but I could tell, by her silence and her smile, that something significant was going on.

The girls, that day, were remembering their Debs.

‘Could you believe how many Mounties were there?’ Elaina said, spooning foam from the surface of her cappuccino and leaving it in her saucer (‘All the calories are in the foam,’ she had told me once, as though in confidence). ‘Oh my God. It wasn’t even their Debs. It was like a combined Debs. The schools should have them together. Like when I was in sixth year they drove my whole class down to Clongowes in a coach so we could score Clongowes boys, or they could score us, I wasn’t sure which. They set up a disco or whatever to make it all look above board, but everybody knew the real reason.’ She took a sip and crossed her legs. She wore bootcut Levis and calf-length leather boots with three-inch heels. ‘But seriously. They shouldn’t let Mount Anville people gatecrash the Ailesbury College Debs. It’s ridiculous. They should have got, like, security, or something.’