In trying to make sense of the events of this single night, the night that Conor died, I find myself drawn into deeper and deeper mysteries: mysteries of character, mysteries of influence, mysteries of motivation. These are questions nobody can answer. But I’d like an answer to them, even so.

On New Year’s Eve, 2003, Barry Fox threw a party. This was the party at which Barry and Stephen O’Brien almost fell out.

It was unusual for Stephen to have been invited at all. Barry’s New Year’s parties were, usually, Brookfield occasions. But Stephen was going out with a new girl by then – Clodagh Finnegan, his longterm girlfriend, who was there on the night Conor died – and she was the sister of Andy Finnegan, who had played scrum half for the Brookfield SCT.

Stephen had met Clodagh at the UCD Fresher’s Ball in September, 2003. Stephen was a second year by then, but going to the Fresher’s Ball was still de rigueur for all Quinn School students and former Brookfield boys. Clodagh was a St Anne’s girl who wore hoodies and short ruffled skirts and no tights. She had an overlong lopsided fringe that made her tilt her head back so she could see you. Stephen O’Brien was in love with her, I think. It wasn’t obvious, because Steve was undemonstrative, except when he was drunk, but I always thought that he and Clodagh would last. They were the kind of couple you quickly learn to take for granted.

Clodagh broke up with Steve when she found out he’d been involved in Conor’s death.

What Stephen liked about Clodagh was that she liked sex as much as he did. ‘She lets me put it anywhere I want, man,’ he told Richard Culhane.

‘That’s, like ... way too much information, Steve,’ Richard said.

The only problem with Clodagh was that she drove Stephen’s friends crazy.

‘That girl fucking never stops talking,’ Barry Fox complained to me once.

The guys would sit in Eddie Rocket’s listening as Clodagh talked to Steve.

‘You don’t understand, Steve, she’s being such a bitch,’ Clodagh said. ‘So she comes over to my till and she’s like, Clodagh, have you see the roster cos your name is down for Saturday and you have to make sure you get the right time and blah blah blah. So I’m there, Yeah, yeah, it’s cool and blah blah blah. But then OMIGOD I love this song have you heard this it’s AMAZING, it’s so about me and Michael. Just imagine: this song, car, country road, spliff. D’you know what I mean? So I’m like, why are you being such a bitch about this, you’re only doing it because Daniel said he’d let me take a smoke break half an hour early and Steve, she so wants to fuck him it’s unbelievable. So I was out there, like, having my smoke break and did you order chilli fries? Did I? I ordered the milkshake.’

The adult world – the world of social and moral subtlety in which everyone else was gradually finding their way – was something that flickered at the edges of Clodagh’s attention. If she saw it, she never saw it whole; she saw the parts that related to herself, and these she commandeered as material for her endless chatter.