Ka-pow, he mouthed.

Ha-ha, I grinned back.

He was no doubt giving the rest of the scrum a full account about what went on beneath the duvet. Of course he was! And later he was back for more. Bell rings about ten: orthodontic beam on porch. In fact, he appeared to have pretty much moved into the house. Every night now he was among us.

‘Babes!’ she squealed, and she raced down the hallway, and leapt onto him, and right there – right in front of me! – he cupped her butt-cheek.

Now often, between box-set episodes, Saoirse and I hang in the kitchen – it’s maybe our fave space, and it’s tricked out with as much cutesy, old-timey shit as a soul could reasonably stomach. The Aga. The stoneware pots from Puglia. The St Brigid’s Cross made out of actual, west of Ireland reeds for an ethnic-type touch. We snack hard and we just, like, sway with the kitchen vibe? But now Ellie and Aodhan were invading. Eighteen times a night they were out of the back room and attacking the fridge. Saoirse just smiled, fondly, as they ploughed into the hummus, the olives, the flatbreads, the cold cuts, the blue cheese, the Ben ’n’ Jerry’s, the lavender-dusted chocolate from Fallon & Byrne. I watched the motherfucker from the island counter – the way he wolfed the stuff down was unreal.

‘Do they feed you at your own place at all, Aodhan?’ I said, wryly.

He chortled, and he took out a six pack of Petit Filous yoghurts, and he made for the couch-and-duvet in my back room. He mock-punched me in the gut as he passed by.

‘This ol’ boy’s runnin’ on heavy fuel,’ he said, and he mussed my hair, or what’s left of it.

Later, in the den, I turned to Saoirse:

‘He’s treating me like a bitch,’ I said.

She was freezeframing bits of The Wire that featured the gay killer Omar because she had a thing for him. She had lately been waking in the night and crying out his name.

‘So what are you going to do about it?’ she said.

‘I know they’re fucking,’ I said. ‘I can just … smell it?’

‘You need to talk to Doctor Murtagh about this,’ she said.

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning cognitive fucking thewapy,’ she said. ‘Meaning medication time. Meaning this is looking like a bweakdown-type thing again?’

All over the house, I felt like I could hear him … chomping? You know sometimes, in a plane, when your ears are weird, and they flip out the food trays, and you chew, and you can hear the jaw motions of your own mastication in a loud, amped, massively unpleasant way? It was like I was hearing that all over the house –

Aodhan!

Chomping!

Also, he was using the downstairs loo, under the stairs, and of course he pissed like a prize stallion. Saoirse thought it was all marvellous, and she talked increasingly about how hot she thought he was, as hot almost as Omar. We’re talking a lunk but angelically pretty – like a beefy choirboy that could mangle a bear? Fucking hideous.