She had her hands wrapped around the mug again, tilting it in circles and watching the tea swirl. The smell of it was doing its job, making this alien place feel homey and safe. “Actually, it probably stopped working a long time before that. You can see it in the photos: we stop being jigsawed together like in that one there, instead we’re just these elbows and knees stuck out at each other, all awkward … We just didn’t want to see it. Pat, especially. The less it worked, the harder he tried. We’d be sitting on the pier or somewhere, and Pat’d be spread out till he was practically stretching, trying to keep close to all of us, make it feel like one big gang again. I think he was proud of it, that he still hung out with the same friends he’d had since he was a kid. That meant something to him. He didn’t want to let it go.”

She was unusual, Fiona: perceptive, acute, sensitive; the kind of girl who would spend a long time alone thinking about something she didn’t understand, picking away at it until the knot unraveled. It made her a useful witness, but I don’t like dealing with unusual people. “Four guys, three girls,” I said. “Three couples and an odd man out? Or just a gang of mates?”

Fiona almost smiled, down at the photo. “A gang of mates, basically. Even when Jenny and Pat started going out, it didn’t change things as much as you’d think. Everyone had seen it coming for ages, anyway.”

I said, “I remember you saying you dreamed about someone loving you the way Pat loved Jenny. The other lads were no prizes, no? You didn’t bother giving it a go with any of them?”

She blushed. The rosiness drove the gray out of her face, turned her young and vivid. For a moment I thought it was for Pat, that he had been filling up the place other boys could have had, but she said, “I actually did. Conor … we went out, just for a while. Four months, the summer I was sixteen.”

Which was practically marriage, at that age. I caught the tiny shift of Richie’s feet. I said, “But he treated you badly.”

The blush brightened. “No. Not badly. I mean, he was never mean to me, nothing like that.”

“Really? Most kids that age, they can be pretty cruel.”

“Conor never was. He was … he’s a sweet guy. Kind.”

I said, “But … ?”

“But …” Fiona rubbed at her cheeks, like she was trying to wipe the flush away. “I mean, I was kind of startled when he even asked me out—I always wondered if maybe he was into Jenny. Nothing he said, just … you know how you get a vibe? And then, once we were going out, he … it felt like … I mean, we had a great time, we had a laugh, but he always wanted to do stuff together with Pat and Jenny. Like go to the cinema with them, or go hang out on the beach with them, or whatever. All his body, all the angles of him always pointed Jenny’s way. And when he looked at her … he lit up. He’d tell some joke, and on the punch line he’d look at her, not at me …”