We were eighteen and in Galligan’s, late on a Saturday night in spring, the first time Rosie said England to me. My whole generation has stories about Galligan’s, and the ones who don’t have their own borrow other people’s. Every middle-aged suit in Dublin will tell you happily how he legged it out of there when the place was raided at three in the morning, or bought U2 a drink there before they were famous, or met his wife or got a tooth knocked out moshing or got so stoned he fell asleep in the jacks and nobody found him till after the weekend. The place was a rat hole and a firetrap: peeling black paint, no windows, spray-stenciled murals of Bob Marley and Che Guevara and whoever else the current staff happened to admire. But it had a late bar—more or less: no beer license, so you chose between two types of sticky German wine, both of which made you feel mildly poncy and severely ripped off—and it had the kind of live-music lottery where you never knew what you were going to get tonight. Kids nowadays wouldn’t touch the place with someone else’s. We loved it.

Rosie and I were there to see a new glam-rock band called Lipstick On Mars that she had heard was good, plus whoever else happened to be on. We were drinking the finest German white and dancing ourselves dizzy—I loved watching Rosie dance, the swing of her hips and the whip of her hair and the laugh curving her mouth: she never let her face go blank when she danced like other girls did, she always had an expression. It was shaping up to be a good night. The band was no Led Zeppelin, but they had smart lyrics, a great drummer and that reckless shine that bands did have, back then, when no one had anything to lose and the fact that you didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making it big didn’t matter, because throwing your whole heart into this band was the only thing that stopped you being just another futureless dole bunny moping in his bedsit. It gave them something: a drop of magic.

The bass player broke a string to prove he was serious, and while he was changing it Rosie and I went up to the bar for more wine. “That stuff’s poxy,” Rosie told the barman, fanning herself with her top.

“I know, yeah. I think they make it out of Benylin. Leave it in the airing cupboard for a few weeks and away you go.” The barman liked us.

“Poxier than usual, even. You got a bad batch. Have you nothing decent, have you not?”

“This does the job, doesn’t it? Otherwise, ditch the boyfriend, wait till we close up and I’ll take you somewhere better.”