Conor ran a hand over his mouth again; I saw him bite down on the flesh of his palm. “She was crying. I started to say something, I don’t even know what, but Jenny slapped her hands over her ears and walked off, fast, down the road. Pat looked at me like I was dirt. He said, ‘Thanks, man. That was great.’ And he went after her.”

I said, “And what did you do?”

“I walked away. Walked around that shit-hole estate for a couple of hours, looking for something that’d make me ring Pat and say Sorry, man, I was so wrong, this place is gonna be paradise. All I found was more shit hole. In the end I rang this other mate of mine and got him to pick me up. Didn’t hear from them again. Didn’t try to get in touch, either.”

“Hmm,” I said. I leaned back in my chair, tapping my pen off my teeth, and considered that. “I suppose I’ve heard of friendships breaking up over some weird stuff, all right. But property values? Seriously?”

“I turned out to be right, didn’t I?”

“Were you pleased about that?”

“No. I’d have loved to be wrong.”

“Because you cared about Pat. Not to mention Jenny. You cared about Jenny.”

“About all four of them.”

“Especially Jenny. No, hang on: I’m not done. I’m a simple guy, Conor. Ask my partner here, he’ll tell you: I always go for the simplest solution, and it usually turns out to be the right one. So I’m thinking you could have fought with the Spains over their choice of house and the size of their mortgage and what it meant about their worldview and whatever else you just said—I lost track of some of it, you can remind me later. But it’s a lot simpler, given the background, that you guys fought because you were still in love with Jenny Spain.”

“That never even came up. We hadn’t talked about it since that one time, after Fiona broke up with me.”

I said, “So you were still in love with her.”

After a moment Conor said, quietly and painfully, “I’ve never known anyone like her.”

“Which is why your girlfriends never last. Right?”

“I don’t throw years of my life into something I don’t want. No matter who tells me I should. I saw Pat and Jenny; I know what the real thing looks like. Why would I go after anything else?”

I said, “But you’re trying to tell me that’s not what the argument was about.”

A flash of narrow, disgusted gray eyes. “It wasn’t. You think I’d’ve let them guess, either of them?”

“They did before.”

“Because I was younger. I was shite at hiding stuff, back then.”

I laughed out loud. “Just one big open book, yeah? Looks like Pat and Jenny weren’t the only ones who changed when they grew up.”

“I got more sense. I got more control. I didn’t turn into a different person.”