The sadness vanished, and I got a quick mischievous snippet of giggle that made her look like a girl again. “I did, didn’t I? That dance, the first time I saw him: I took one look and I said to Louise Lacey, I said, ‘That one’s mine.’ He was wearing them flares that were all the rage—”

Jackie started to laugh.

“Don’t be making fun, you,” Carmel told her. “Your Gavin does be always in them raggedy old jeans; I like a fella that makes a bit of an effort. Trevor had a lovely little arse on him in the flares, so he did. And he smelled only gorgeous. What are yous two laughing at?”

“You brazen hussy, you,” I said.

Carmel took a prim sip of her Babycham. “I was not. Things were different back then. If you were mad about a fella, you’d sooner die than let him know. You had to make him do the chasing.”

Jackie said, “Jaysus, Pride and bleeding Prejudice. I asked Gavin out, so I did.”

“I’m telling yous, it worked; better than all this rubbish nowadays, girls going to the clubs with no knickers on them. I got my fella, didn’t I? Engaged on my twenty-first. Were you still here for that, Francis?”

“Just,” I said. “I left about three weeks after.” I remembered the engagement party: the two families squeezed into our front room, the mammies eyeing each other up like a pair of overweight pit bulls, Shay doing his big-brother act and shooting Trevor the filthies, Trevor all Adam’s apple and terrified bug-eyes, Carmel flushed and triumphant and squeezed into a pink pleated horror that made her look like an inside-out fish. Back then I was even more of an arrogant prick; I sat on the windowsill next to Trevor’s piggy little brother, ignoring him and congratulating myself fervently on the fact that I was getting the hell out of Dodge and would never have an engagement party involving egg sandwiches. Careful what you wish for. Looking at the four of them around the pub table, I felt like I had missed something in that night; like an engagement party might have been, at least in the long run, something worth having.

“I wore my pink,” Carmel said, with satisfaction. “Everyone said I looked only smashing.”

“You did, all right,” I said, winking at her. “If only you weren’t my sister, I’d have fancied you myself.”

She and Jackie squealed—“Yeuch, stop!”—but I wasn’t paying attention any more. Down at their end of the table, Shay and Kevin had been having a chat of their own, and the defensive note in Kevin’s voice had ratcheted up enough to make me tune in. “It’s a job. What’s wrong with it?”