‘Totally,’ Rebecca said.

‘The Mounties did bring some gorgeous guys,’ Elaina said. ‘I mean gorgeous. But they behaved so badly. I just couldn’t believe it. Like this one guy threw up all down the front of Natasha O’Connor’s Debs dress. I mean, fine if it’s an ordinary dress for a night out or whatever. But you don’t vomit all over someone’s Debs dress. It’s just not on.’

‘Didn’t you, like, score that guy?’ Laura asked.

‘That was before,’ Elaina said crossly.

Laura and Elaina had been on the cake committee for their Debs at Ailesbury College. Because of the number of Brookfield boys who had been invited to attend (I had heard a rumour, possibly satirical in origin, that in a certain sixth-year class at Ailesbury College a year or two ago, every single girl had been going out with a Brookfield boy), there had been some debate about the cake’s design. Every year the cake was decorated with the Ailesbury College colours: green and white. This year, several girls – including Laura – on the cake committee had suggested adding a section in Brookfield red and white. The debate had become so heated that eventually the school authorities had been forced to step in and assert that the Ailesbury College cake should bear the Ailesbury College colours and nothing else. Bitterness about this affair still lingered, two years later, and when Ailesbury College girls from that year got together, sooner or later they would start to talk about the cake.

Elaina consulted her mobile phone. ‘Didn’t you score Richard that night?’ she said.

‘At the Debs? Yeah, right,’ Laura said. ‘He was going out with, like, Claire Lawrence.’

‘Yeah, but he took you to your Debs.’

‘I just met someone, actually,’ Laura said.

‘Where did he go to school?’ Rebecca asked.

‘That’s for me to know,’ Laura said.

‘That means we know him,’ Elaina said. ‘We’ve probably, like, scored him or something.’

Elaina and Rebecca laughed together, though I sensed in Rebecca’s effortful chuckle some pain at the fact that, whoever Laura’s new boyfriend was, Rebecca would almost certainly not have scored him.

‘He says I have soulful eyes,’ Laura said, nettled.

‘Doesn’t sound like anyone I’ve ever hooked up with,’ Elaina said.

‘Me either,’ I said, and achieved my aim of getting a laugh and distracting Laura from Elaina’s curiosity.

Laura punched me on the arm. ‘Bet you’d like them to say that, though, wouldn’t you?’ she said. ‘You’re just a big romantic.’

Elaina ordered a Caesar salad which she insisted she would share with Rebecca. Laura asked for another coffee. They chattered amiably. They flirted with the waiter.

Elaina chewed a leaf of lettuce. ‘Did you see they’ve got Uggs in the Dundrum Town Centre for like, a hundred and fifty quid? I think that’s amazing.’

Rebecca said, ‘I thought you didn’t like Uggs.’

‘Well, you know, I’ve come around.’

I don’t know whether Richard ever actually told Laura that she had soulful eyes. Possibly this was something he had said to her back at the beginning of Laura’s first year at UCD, when after a summer apart they ran into each other one night in the Forum Bar after the Literary and Historical Society debate on prostitution. If so, it wasn’t up to the standards of Richard’s usual come-ons.