I said, “I figured that was what did it for Rosie. All her life, her da’s been warning her about what a shower of filthy savages the Mackeys are. She’s ignored him, she’s fallen in love with me, she’s told herself I’m different. And then, right when she’s a few hours away from putting her whole life into my hands, right when every minuscule doubt in her mind has to be a thousand times its normal size, here come the Mackeys to demonstrate Daddy’s point in living color: putting on a holy show for the entire neighborhood, howling and brawling and biting and throwing shite like a troop of baboons on PCP. She had to wonder what I was like behind closed doors. She had to wonder if, deep down, I was one of them. She had to wonder just how long that would take to surface.”

“So you left. Even without her.”

I said, “I figured I’d paid my way out.”

“I wondered about that. Why you didn’t just come home.”

“If I’d had the money, I’d have hopped straight on a plane to Australia. The farther the better.”

Jackie asked, “Do you still blame them? Or was that just the drink talking, last night?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I do. The whole lot of them. That’s probably unfair, but sometimes life can just be a big old bitch.”

My phone beeped: text message. Hi frank, kev here, not meanin 2 hassle u cos i no u r a busy man but when u get a chance give us a bell ok? Could do w a chat. Thx. I deleted it.

Jackie said, “But what if she wasn’t walking out on you after all? If that never happened?”

I didn’t have an answer for that one—a big part of my head didn’t even understand the question—and it felt decades too late to go looking for one. I ignored Jackie till she shrugged and started refurbishing her lipstick. I watched Holly spin in great crazy circles as the swing chains untwisted, and I very carefully thought about exactly nothing except whether she needed to put on her scarf, how long it would be before she simmered down enough to be hungry, and what I wanted on my pizza.

Chapter 10

10