We shot the breeze for a while: her parents, my parents, various neighbors who had got married or had kids or moved out to the suburbs or developed intriguing health problems. Imelda was still around, a two-minute walk away on Hallows Lane, but something at the corners of Mandy’s mouth told me they didn’t see as much of each other any more, and I didn’t ask. Instead I made her laugh: get a woman laughing and you’re halfway to getting her talking. She still had the same round bubbly giggle that exploded out of her and made you want to laugh too.

It took ten minutes or so before Mandy asked, casually, “So tell us, d’you ever hear anything from Rosie?”

“Not a dicky bird,” I said, just as easily. “You?”

“Nothing. I thought . . .” That glance again. “I thought you might have, that’s all.”

I asked, “Did you know?”

Her eyes were down on the socks she was rolling, but her lashes flickered. “What d’you mean?”

“You and Rosie were close. I thought she might have told you.”

“That yous were eloping, like? Or that she . . . ?”

“Either one.”

She shrugged. “Ah, Jaysus, Mandy,” I said, putting a humorous twist on it. “It’s been twenty-odd years. I can promise you, I’m not going to throw a wobbler because girls talk to each other. I only wondered.”

“I hadn’t a notion she was thinking of breaking it off. Honest to God, not a clue. I have to tell you, Francis, when I heard yous two weren’t together, I was only gobsmacked. I thought for definite you’d have been married, with half a dozen kids to put a stop to your gallop.”

“So you did know we were planning on heading off together.”

“Yous went off the same night, sure. Everyone figured.”

I grinned at her and shook my head. “‘Breaking it off,’ you said. You knew we were still seeing each other. We’d been keeping that under wraps for almost two years, or at least I thought we had been.”

After a moment Mandy made a wry little face at me and tossed the socks into the washing basket. “Smart-arse. It’s not that she was spilling her guts to us, or nothing—she never said a word, right up until . . . Did you and Rosie meet up for a few drinks, about a week before yous left? Somewhere in town, I think it was?”

O’Neill’s on Pearse Street, and all the college boys’ heads turning as Rosie made her way back to our table with a pint in each hand. She was the only girl I knew who drank pints, and she always stood her round. “Yeah,” I said. “We did.”