“Oh, yeah. It almost turned into a catfight. Mrs. Daly called you a little gouger and Ma called Rosie a little slapper, like mother like daughter. Mrs. Daly went through the roof.”

“See, now, my money’d be on Ma. The weight advantage.”

“Don’t let her hear you say that.”

“She could just sit on Mrs. Daly till she surrendered.”

We were laughing, under our breath in the dark, like two kids. “Mrs. Daly was armed, though,” Kevin said. “Those fingernails—”

“Fuck me. Has she still got those?”

“Longer. She’s a human—what do you call those?”

“Garden rake?”

“No! The ninja yokes. Throwing stars.”

“So who won?”

“Ma, give or take. She shoved Mrs. Daly out onto the landing and slammed the door. Mrs. Daly yelled and kicked the door and all, but in the end she gave up. She went and had a row with Mr. Daly about Rosie’s stuff, instead. People were practically selling tickets. Better than Dallas.”

In our old bedroom, Da went into a coughing fit that made the bed rattle off the wall. We froze and listened. He got his breath back in long wheezes.

“Anyway,” Kevin said, lower. “That was sort of the end of it. It was major gossip for like two weeks, and then everyone forgot about it, more or less. Ma and Mrs. Daly didn’t talk for a few years—Da and Mr. Daly never did anyway, sure, so no big change there. Ma gave out shite every Christmas when you didn’t send a card, but . . .”

But it was the eighties and emigration was one of your three main career paths, along with Daddy’s firm and the dole. Ma had to have been expecting at least one of us to end up with a one-way ferry ticket. “She didn’t think I was dead in a ditch?”

Kevin snorted. “Nah. She said whoever got hurt, it wouldn’t be our Francis. We didn’t call the cops or report you missing or anything, but that wasn’t . . . Not that we didn’t care, like. We just figured . . .” The mattress moved as he shrugged.

“That Rosie and I had run off together.”

“Yeah. I mean, everyone knew the two of yous had been mad into each other, right? And everyone knew what Mr. Daly thought about that. So why not, you know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Why not.”

“Plus, there was the note. I think that was what blew Mrs. Daly’s fuse: someone was messing about in Number Sixteen and they found this note. From Rosie, like. I don’t know if Jackie told you—”

“I read it,” I said.

Kevin’s head turned towards me. “Yeah? You saw it?”

“Yeah.”

He waited; I didn’t elaborate. “When did . . . ? You mean before she left it there? She showed it to you?”

“After. Late that night.”

“So—what? She left it for you? Not for her family?”