‘My mum picked it up for me,’ Laura said. ‘I’m wearing it to, like, shut her up.’

Laura, of course, had recognized the hoodie immediately as the one that she and Conor had fought over while they were shopping in Dundrum. She knew why Conor had bought it for her, too. She knew that Conor was apologizing for his behaviour and forgiving her at the same time.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about this. Richard’s attention had made her uncomfortable about the hoodie. But she never countenanced giving it back or throwing it away.

It wasn’t unusual, I should explain, for Richard to remark on Laura’s new clothes. All the boys in Richard’s group were hyper-observant when it came to how people dressed. But Richard noticed the star-spangled hoodie for a different reason. He noticed it because he had seen it before.

On the afternoon of 2 August – the day before he had lunch with Laura – Richard had been standing outside the Dundrum Town Centre with two boys from his Quinn School class. Richard was waiting for the boys to finish their cigarettes. He looked across the sunlit plaza and saw Conor Harris, standing by the coffee kiosk and holding a bag from BT2.

Impelled by an obscure sense of charity – it was the sense of himself as a victorious suitor – and by the lingering significance of their days on the Brookfield SCT, Richard ambled across to say hi.

‘Alright, Richard,’ Conor said. ‘What’s the craic, man?’

‘Not too bad, not too bad,’ Richard said. ‘How’s things with yourself?’

‘Grand, grand.’

This conversation was no less awkward than Conor’s chat with Laura earlier that afternoon.

He and Richard talked for a couple of minutes about the starting line-up for an upcoming Ireland match. Then Richard said, ‘What did you buy?’

‘Ah, nothing,’ Conor said.

‘Let’s have a look,’ Richard said.

(Here it is again, that fixation with clothes so peculiar to these boys and their world. Conor and Richard were like two spoiled princesses, exclaiming over their latest find. But what else could they have talked about?)

Conor opened the BT2 bag and showed Richard the hoodie.

I wonder why he did this, now. He knew that Richard would recognize the hoodie when Laura wore it – that is, if she wore it. But Conor’s motives may have been simple. He was trying to cause a fight. He was trying to get Laura and Richard to break up.

‘Bit feminine for you, isn’t it?’ Richard said.

‘Well, you know yourself,’ Conor said. ‘Buying something for the bird’s birthday.’

Richard frowned and said, ‘Who’s your bird, these days? Lisa McKeown, is it?’

‘Sort of,’ Conor said.

Something darkened at that moment; something passed between the boys that made their faces thicken with remembered mistrust. Was Richard thinking about what had happened all those years ago on Inishfall? Was Conor thinking of Laura, and the way she looked as she walked away from him towards the library?