“Jenny tucks her hand in my elbow and she goes, ‘Conor, it’s fine, honest to God it is. I know you’re just trying to look out for us or whatever, but you’re being totally old-fashioned. Everyone’s doing it these days. Everyone.’”

He laughed, a single dry scrape. “She said it like that meant something. Like that was the argument over, end of story. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.”

Richie said quietly, “She was right. Our generation, how many of them were doing the exact same thing? Thousands, man. Thousands and thousands.”

“So? Who gives a fuck what everyone else does? They were buying a house, not a T-shirt. Not an investment. A home. If you let other people decide what you think about something like that, if you just follow along because it’s trendy, then who are you? When the flock changes direction tomorrow, what, you just throw away everything you think and start over, because other people said so? Then what are you, underneath? You’re nothing. You’re no one.”

That fury, dense and cold as stone. I thought of the kitchen, smashed and bloody. “Is that what you said to Jenny?”

“I couldn’t say anything. Pat—he must’ve seen it on my face—Pat goes, ‘It’s true, man. Ask anyone in the country: ninety-nine percent of them would say we’re doing the right thing.’”

That raw scrape of a laugh again. “Stood there with my mouth open, staring. I couldn’t … Pat was never like that. Never. Not when we were sixteen. Yeah, sometimes he’d have a smoke or a spliff just because everyone at the party was, but underneath he knew who he was. He’d never have done anything full-on brain-dead, got into a car where the driver was pissed or anything like that, just because someone tried to pressure him into it. And now here he was, a fucking grown man, bleating on about ‘Everyone else is doing it!’”

I said, “So what did you say?”

Conor shook his head. “There wasn’t anything to say. I knew that already. The two of them … I didn’t have a clue who they were, any more. They weren’t people I wanted anything to do with. I tried anyway—fucking eejit. I went, ‘What the fuck’s happened to you two?’

“Pat says, ‘We grew up. That’s what happened. This is what being an adult is like. You play by the rules.’

“I go, ‘No it’s fucking well not. If you’re an adult, you think for your fucking self. Are you insane? Are you a zombie? What are you?’

“We were squared up like we were about to beat the shite out of each other. I thought we were; I thought he was going to punch me, any second. But then Jenny grabs my elbow again and pulls me around, and she yells, ‘You shut up! Just shut up! You’re going to ruin the whole thing. I can’t stand it, all this negativity—I don’t want that anywhere near the kids, I don’t want it anywhere near us, I don’t want it! It’s sick. If everyone starts thinking like you, the whole country’s going to go down the toilet and then we will be in trouble. Then will you be happy?’”