The sudden, painful flare of envy caught me by surprise. I was a loner, my last few years in school. I could have done with a friend like that.

Richie said, “You would, all right. I know you said college got in the way, but I’d say it took more than just that to make you lot drop each other.”

Fiona said, unexpectedly, “Yeah, it did. I think when you’re kids, you’re less … defined? Then you get older and you start deciding what kind of person you want to be, and it doesn’t always match up with what your friends are turning into.”

“I know what you mean. Me and my mates from school, we still meet up, but half of us want to talk about gigs and Xbox, and the other half want to talk about the color of baby shite. Lots of long silences, these days.” Richie slid into his seat, handed me a mug of coffee and took a big slug of his own. “So who went what way, in your gang?”

“At first it was mostly Mac and Ian. They wanted to be, like, rich guys about town—Mac works for an estate agent, Ian does something in banking, I’m not even sure what. They started going to all the super-trendy places, like drinking in Café en Seine and then on to Lillie’s, places like that. When we’d all meet up, Ian would be telling you how much he paid for every single thing he was wearing, and Mac would be, like, shouting about how some girl had been all over him the night before and the tide wouldn’t take her out, but he was in the mood for some charity work so he threw her a length … They thought I was an idiot for going into photography—specially Mac—and he kept telling me I was an idiot and I was never going to make the big bucks and I should grow up, and I needed to buy myself some decent clothes so I’d have a chance at bagging a guy who could look after me. And then Ian’s company sent him to Chicago and Mac was mostly in Leitrim, selling apartments in these big developments down there, so we got out of touch. I figured …”

She turned pages in the album, gave a wry little smile to a shot of the four lads making duck faces and faux-gangster hand signs. “I mean, an awful lot of people went like that during the boom. It’s not like Mac and Ian were going out of their way to be tossers; they were just doing what everyone else was. I figured they’d outgrow it. Up until then, they’re no fun to be around, but they’re still good guys, underneath. People you knew when you were teenagers, the ones who saw your stupidest haircut and the most embarrassing things you’ve done in your life, and they still cared about you after all that: they’re not replaceable, you know? I always thought we’d get back on track, someday. Now, after this … I don’t know.”