–  You can’t wear your knickers, you dafty! What’ll you do with them?

–  Lizzie! For Christ’s sake. Will you stop?

–  You have to plan it. God is in the detail.

–  I swear to God, I’m gonna lump you one in a minute!

–  You’ve not time to be abusin’ me … you need to decide if you’re wearin’ yer knickers or not for the romantic interlude of the week. Picture it now, folks: a boy, a girl, an open door?

Lizzie drew stars in the sky with her hands and then clutched her chest and fell down on the bed, sighing and writhing about shouting.

–  Joe, Joe, me darlin’, don’t put your whole foot there, Joe, or at least take off your hobnailed wellies first!

I tickled her until we both nearly wet our pants and had to lie still in a mess of limbs ’til we got our breath back. At that second in time I’d have been hard-pushed to decide who I loved best in this world, Joe Loughrey or Lizzie Magee?

Lizzie Magee didn’t let up for a minute the whole five days. When she wasn’t discussing the finer points of me and our plan, she prowled the corridors looking for Jacques. Her ‘love’ knew no bounds and she lost at least two nights’ sleep by sitting up at the windows to see if he would come outside for a fag and then she would pounce. He, in turn, was able to block out the space she took up when she was bobbing about in front of him. I had never seen someone so unmoved; it was as if she was speaking a foreign language even though we knew his English was perfect.

Where many a girl would wilt from the constant scorn, the remoter he became the more Lizzie clambered after him. Every time she went too far, it was me he looked at, me he seemed to blame for the fact that she had no shame. I blushed deeper and deeper and tried to drag her away. It would be easier to rip a bone from the teeth of a starved dog.

The week went in somehow between a shocking long Mass or three, several nerdy boys and girls crying and talking about the effect of having brothers in HM Prison Maze and such, cups of luke-warm tea and terrible bowls of roasting-hot vegetable soup. I talked to Joe a few times, enough time for us both to mumble something about Thursday night – I reckoned we’d both left it to the last night in case it was a disaster! Being away from Carncloon had made us shy; we were too exposed without the Long Lounge. With no one watching the clock we had no cut-off point.