The summer stretch had come into the evenings: it was gone seven, but the sky was a soft clear blue and the light flooding through the open windows was pale gold. All around us the Place was humming like a beehive, shimmering with a hundred different stories unfurling. Next door Mad Johnny Malone was singing to himself, in a cheerful cracked baritone: “Where the Strawberry Beds sweep down to the Liffey, you’ll kiss away the worries from my brow . . .” Downstairs Mandy shrieked delightedly, there was a tumble of thumping noises and then an explosion of laughter; farther down, in the basement, someone yelled in pain and Shay and his mates sent up a savage cheer. In the street, two of Sallie Hearne’s young fellas were teaching themselves to ride a robbed bike and giving each other hassle—“No, you golf ball, you’ve to go fast or you’ll fall off, who cares if you hit things?”—and someone was whistling on his way home from work, putting in all the fancy, happy little trills. The smell of fish and chips came in at the windows, along with smart-arse comments from a blackbird on a rooftop and the voices of women swapping the day’s gossip while they brought in their washing from the back gardens. I knew every voice and every door-slam; I even knew the determined rhythm of Mary Halley scrubbing her front steps. If I had listened hard I could have picked out every single person woven into that summer-evening air, and told you every story.

Rosie said, “So tell us: what really happened with Ger and the girder?”

I laughed. “I’m saying nothing.”

“Wasn’t me he was trying to impress, anyway; it was Julie and Mandy. And I won’t blow his cover.”

“Swear?”

She grinned and crossed her heart with one finger, on the soft white skin just where her shirt opened. “Swear.”

“He did catch a girder that was falling. And if he hadn’t it would’ve hit Paddy Fearon, and Paddy wouldn’t’ve walked out of there tonight.”

“But . . . ?”

“But it was sliding off a stack down in the yard, and Ger caught it just before it fell on Paddy’s toe.”

Rosie burst out laughing. “The chancer. That’s typical, d’you know that? Back when we were little young ones, like eight or nine, Ger had the lot of us convinced that he had diabetes, and if we didn’t give him the biscuits out of our school lunches, he’d die. Hasn’t changed a bit, has he?”

Downstairs Julie screamed, “Put me down!” not like she meant it. I said, “Only these days he’s after more than biscuits.”

Rosie raised her bottle. “And fair play to him.”

I asked, “Why would he not be trying to impress you, as well as the others?”

Rosie shrugged. The faintest pink flush had seeped onto her cheeks. “Maybe ’cause he knows I wouldn’t care if he did.”

“No? I thought all the girls fancied Ger.”