“And Shay’s the same. Not that he went frightened, like, and not that Da ever got in his way with the girls, but . . .” Her eyes went to Shay, leaning in the kitchen doorway with a can in his hand and his head bent close to Linda Dwyer’s. “Do you remember that time—you would’ve been about thirteen—he went unconscious?”

I said, “I try my very best not to.” That had been a fun one. Da had aimed a punch at Ma, for reasons that now escape me, and Shay had got hold of his wrist. Da didn’t take well to challenges to his authority; he communicated that concept by grabbing Shay round the throat and giving his head a good smack off the wall. Shay blacked out, for what was probably a minute but seemed like an hour, and spent the rest of the evening cross-eyed. Ma wouldn’t let us bring him to hospital—it wasn’t clear whether she was worried about the doctors, the neighbors or both, but the thought sent her into a full-on conniption. I spent that night watching Shay sleep, assuring Kevin that he wouldn’t die and wondering what the fuck I would do if he did.

Carmel said, “He wasn’t the same, after. He turned hard.”

“He wasn’t exactly a big fluffy marshmallow before.”

“I know yous never got on, but I swear to God, Shay was all right. Himself and myself used to have great chats sometimes, and he used to do grand in school . . . After that was when he started keeping to himself.”

Sallie hit her big finish—“In the meantime we’ll live with me ma!”—and there was a burst of cheers and applause. Carmel and I clapped automatically. Shay lifted his head and glanced around the room. For a second he looked like something out of a cancer ward: grayish and exhausted, with deep hollows under his eyes. Then he went back to smiling at whatever story Linda Dwyer was telling him.

I said, “What’s this got to do with Kevin?”

Carmel sighed deeply and took another dainty sip of fake peaches. The droop to her shoulders said she was heading for the melancholy stage. “Because,” she said, “that’s why I was jealous of him. Kevin and Jackie . . . they had a bad time, I know they did. But nothing like that ever happened to them; nothing where they weren’t the same after. Me and Shay made sure of that.”

“And me.”

She considered that. “Yeah,” she acknowledged. “And you. But we tried to look after you, as well—ah, we did, Francis. I always thought you were all right too. You’d the guts to leave, anyway. And then Jackie always told us you were in great form . . . I thought that meant you got out before your head was wrecked altogether.”

I said, “I got pretty close. No cigar, though.”