No one asked about Holly. Maybe I’d been underrating Jackie; maybe she did know how to keep her mouth shut. “Here,” Carmel said, rummaging in her bag. She found her mobile phone, fiddled with it and held it out to me. “D’you want to see them?”

I flipped through the photos. Four plain, freckly kids; Trevor, the same as always, except for the hairline; a pebble-dashed seventies semi-d in I couldn’t remember which depressing sub-suburb. Carmel was exactly what she’d always dreamed of being. Very few people ever get to say that. Fair play to her, even if her dream did make me want to slit my throat.

“They look like great kids,” I said, handing the phone back. “Congrats, Melly.”

A tiny catch of breath, above me. “Melly. God . . . Haven’t heard that in years.”

In that light they looked like themselves again. It erased the wrinkles and the gray streaks, fined the heaviness off Kevin’s jaw and wiped the makeup off Jackie, till it was the five of us, fresh and cat-eyed and restless in the dark, spinning our different dreams. If Sallie Hearne looked out her window she’d see us: the Mackey kids, sitting on their steps. For one lunatic second I was glad to be there.

“Ow,” Carmel said, shifting. Carmel was never good with silence. “Me arse is killing me. Are you sure that’s what happened, Francis, what you said inside? About Rosie meaning to come back for that case?”

A low hiss that might have been a laugh, as Shay sent out smoke through his teeth. “It’s a load of shite. He knows that as well as I do.”

Carmel smacked his knee. “Language, you.” Shay didn’t move. “What are you on about? Why would it be a load of shite?” He shrugged.

“I’m not sure about anything,” I said. “But yeah, I think there’s a good chance she’s over in England living happily ever after.”

Shay said, “With no ticket and no ID?”

“She had money saved up. If she couldn’t get hold of her ticket, she could’ve bought another one. And you didn’t need ID to go to England, back then.” All of which was true enough. We were bringing our birth certs along because we knew we might need to sign on the dole while we looked for work, and because we were going to get married.

Jackie asked quietly, “Was I right to ring you, all the same? Or should I have just . . . ?”

The air tightened up. “Left well enough alone,” Shay said.

“No,” I said. “You were dead right all the way, babe. Your instincts are diamond, you know that?”

Jackie stretched out her legs and examined her high heels. I could only see the back of her head. “Maybe,” she said.