I said, “But it wasn’t.”

Conor said, “The two of them brought me down to see the place, when the house was ready. A Sunday: the day before they were signing the final contracts. Two years ago—bit more, because it was summer. It was hot, sticky-hot—cloudy, and the cloud pressing the air down on top of you. The place was …” A grim sound that could have been a laugh. “You’ve seen it. It was better then—the weeds hadn’t come up, and there was still loads of work going on, so at least it didn’t feel like a graveyard—but still: it wasn’t somewhere anyone would want to live. When we get out of the car, Jenny goes, ‘Look, you can see the sea! Isn’t it gorgeous?’ I go, ‘Yeah, great view,’ but it wasn’t. The water looked dirty, greasy; there should have been a breeze coming off of it, cool us down, but it was like the air had died. The house was pretty enough, if you like Stepford, but straight across the road was waste ground and a bulldozer. The whole place was fucking horrendous. Made me want to turn around and get out as fast as I could, drag Pat and Jenny with me.”

Richie said, “What about them? Were they happy enough?”

Conor shrugged. “Sounded like. Jenny goes, ‘They’ll be finished building across the road in just a couple of months’—didn’t look like that to me, but I kept my mouth shut. She goes, ‘It’s going to be so lovely. The mortgage people are giving us a hundred and ten percent, so we can furnish the place. I was thinking about a maritime theme for the kitchen, to go with the sea? Don’t you think a maritime theme would be nice?’

“I go, ‘Might be safer to take just the hundred percent, furnish as you go along.’ Jenny laughs—it sounded fake, but that could’ve been just the way the air flattened everything out—and she goes, ‘Oh, Conor, relax. We can afford it. So we won’t eat out as much; there’s nowhere nearby anyway. I want everything to be nice.’

“I go, ‘I’m just saying, it’d be safer. In case.’ Maybe I should’ve said nothing, but that place … It felt like a big dog watching you, starting to come closer, and you know right now is when you need to get the fuck out. Pat just laughs and goes, ‘Man, do you know how fast property prices are rising? We haven’t even moved in yet, and the gaff’s already worth more than we’re paying. Any time we decide to sell, we’ll come out with a profit.’”

I said, hearing the pompous note in my voice, “If they were crazy, then so was the rest of the country. Nobody saw the crash coming.”

Conor’s eyebrow flicked. “You think?”

“If anyone had, the country wouldn’t be in this mess.”

He shrugged. “I don’t have a clue about financial stuff. I’m just a web designer. But I knew nobody wanted thousands of houses out in the middle of nowhere. People only bought them because they got told that in five years’ time they could sell up for double what they’d paid, and move somewhere decent. Like I said, I’m just some idiot, but even I knew a pyramid scheme eventually runs out of suckers.”