Carmel said, “D’you know something, Francis, we said we wouldn’t ask you, but I can’t help it—Jackie, would you ever stop that, don’t be pinching me!”

Jackie had got her bladder back under control and was giving Carmel the evil stare of doom. Carmel said, with dignity, “If he doesn’t want to talk about it, he can tell me himself, so he can. Francis, why did you never come back before this?”

I said, “I was too scared that Ma would get the wooden spoon and beat the living shite out of me. Do you blame me?”

Shay snorted. Carmel said, “Ah, seriously, but, Francis. Why?”

She and Kevin and even Jackie—who had asked this question a bunch of times and never got an answer—were gazing at me, tipsy and perplexed and even a little hurt. Shay was picking a fleck of something out of his pint.

I said, “Let me ask yous something. What would you die for?”

“Jaysus,” Kevin said. “You’re a barrel of laughs, aren’t you?”

“Ah, leave him,” Jackie said. “The day that’s in it.”

I said, “Da once told me he’d die for Ireland. Would you do that?”

Kevin rolled his eyes. “Da’s stuck in the seventies. No one thinks like that any more.”

“Try it for a second. Just for the crack. Would you?”

He gave me a bemused look. “Like why?”

“Say England invaded all over again.”

“They couldn’t be arsed.”

“If, Kev. Stay with me here.”

“I dunno. I never thought about it.”

“That,” Shay said, not too aggressively, aiming his pint at Kevin, “that right there, that’s what has this country ruined.”

“Me? What’d I do?”

“You and the rest like you. Your whole bloody generation. What do you care about, only Rolexes and Hugo Boss? What else do you think about, even? Francis is right, for once in his life. You’d want to get yourself something you’d die for, pal.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Kevin said. “What would you die for? Guinness? A good ride?”

Shay shrugged. “Family.”

“What are you on about?” Jackie demanded. “You hate Ma and Da’s guts.”

All five of us burst out laughing; Carmel had to tip her head back and knuckle tears out of her eyes. “I do,” Shay acknowledged, “yeah. But that’s not the point.”

“Would you die for Ireland, yeah?” Kevin asked me. He still sounded a little miffed.

“I would in me hole,” I said, which set everyone off again. “I was posted in Mayo for a while. Have yous ever been to Mayo, have yous? It’s boggers, sheep and scenery. I’m not dying for that.”

“What, then?”

“Like my man Shay says,” I told Kev, waving my glass at Shay, “that’s not the point. The point is that I know.”

“I’d die for the kids,” Carmel said. “God forbid.”