“When did you say it to him?”

“The Saturday night, in the pub. The night before yous were leaving. I thought, sure, what harm at that stage, it was too late for anyone to stop yous—”

Three girls leaning on the railings and tossing their hair, glossy and restless as wild fillies, fidgeting on the edge of their anything-can-happen evening. Apparently just about anything had. I said, “If you give me one more shitty excuse, I’m going to put my foot through that robbed telly.”

Imelda shut up. I said, “Did you tell him when we were going?”

A quick jerk of a nod.

“And where you’d left the suitcase?”

“Yeah. Not what room, like; just . . . in Number Sixteen.”

The dirty-white winter light through the lace curtains was vicious on her. Slumped in the corner of the sofa, in this overheated room that stank of grease and cigarettes and waste, she looked like an underfilled bag of bones wrapped in gray skin. I couldn’t think of one thing this woman could have wanted that would have been worth what she had thrown away. I said, “Why, Imelda? Why the hell?”

She shrugged. It dawned on me in a slow wave, with the faint red stain mottling her cheeks. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. “You were into Shay?”

Another shrug, this one sharper and pricklier. Those bright-colored girls shrieking and play-fighting, Mandy said to ask if your brother fancies going to the pictures . . . I said, “I thought Mandy was the one who had a thing for him.”

“Her too. We all did—not Rosie, but loads of us. He had his pick.”

“And so you sold Rosie out to get his attention. Is that what you had in mind when you told me you loved her?”

“That’s not bleeding fair. I never meant to—”

I fired the ashtray at the telly. It was heavy and I put my whole body behind it; it smashed through the screen with an impressive crashing noise and an explosion of ash and butts and splinters of glass. Imelda let out something between a gasp and a yelp and cringed away from me, one forearm thrown up to protect her face. Specks of ash filled up the air, whirled and settled on the carpet, the coffee table, her tracksuit bottoms.

“Now,” I said. “What did I warn you?”

She shook her head, wild-eyed. She had a hand pressed over her mouth: someone had trained her not to scream.

I flicked away glittering speckles of glass and found Imelda’s smokes on the coffee table, under a ball of green ribbon. “You’re going to tell me what you said to him, word for word, as close as you can remember. Don’t leave anything out. If you can’t remember something for definite, say so; don’t make shit up. Is that clear?”