“Curiosity. And if someone’s going to come after me for part of the cost of a nursing home, it’d be fun to know in advance.”

“I’ve asked you for nothing. And I’m not going into any nursing home. Shoot myself in the head first.”

“Good for you. Don’t leave it too late.”

“I wouldn’t give yous the satisfaction.”

He took another massive drag on the cigarette and watched the smoke ribbons curl out of his mouth. I asked, “What was that all about, upstairs?”

“This and that. Man’s business.”

“Which means what? Matt Daly rustled your cattle?”

“He shouldn’t have come in my house. Tonight of all nights.”

Wind nosed through the gardens, shouldered at the walls of the shed. For a split second I saw Kevin, just the night before, lying purple and white and battered in the dark, four gardens away. Instead of making me angry, it just made me feel like I weighed twenty stone; like I was going to have to sit there all night long, because my chances of ever being able to get up from that step by myself were nil.

After a while Da said, “D’you remember that thunderstorm? You’d’ve been, I don’t know, five, six. I brought you and your brother outside. Your ma had a fit.”

I said, “Yeah. I remember.” It had been the kind of pressure-cooker summer evening where no one can breathe and vicious fights erupt out of nowhere. When the first bang of thunder went off, Da let out a great laughing roar of relief. He scooped Shay up in one arm and me in the other and legged it down the stairs, with Ma yelping furiously behind us. He held us up to see the lightning flickering above the chimney pots and told us not to be scared of the thunder, because it was just the lightning heating up air as fast as an explosion, and not to be scared of Ma, who was leaning out the window getting shriller by the second. When a sheet of rain finally swept over us he threw his head back to the purple-gray sky and whirled us round and round in the empty street, Shay and me screaming with laughter like wild things, huge warm drops of rain splattering our faces and electricity crackling in our hair, thunder shaking the ground and rumbling up through Da’s bones into ours.

“That was a good storm,” Da said. “A good night.”

I said, “I remember the smell of it. The taste.”