She knew better than to ask whether I’d miss my family. “Yeah,” I said—I wasn’t sure whether it was true or not, but it was what both of us needed to hear. “I’d have been out of here, one way or another. I like this way a lot, though.”

That flicker of smile again, still not a whole one. “Same here.”

I asked, “Then what’s up? Ever since you sat down, you’ve been acting like that seat’s itching the arse off you.”

That got Rosie’s full attention. “Look who’s talking. You’re a laugh a minute tonight, so you are, it’s like going out with Oscar the bleedin’ Grouch—”

“I’m up to ninety because you’re up to ninety. I thought you’d be over the moon about the tickets, and instead—”

“Bollix. You got here like that. You were only dying for a chance to punch the head off that pathetic eejit—”

“And so did you. Are you having second thoughts? Is that what this is about?”

“If you’re trying to break it off with me, Francis Mackey, you act like a man and do it yourself. Don’t you try to make me do your dirty work.”

We glared at each other for a second, balanced on the edge of a flat-out row. Then Rosie let out her breath, slumped back on the bench and pushed her hands through her hair. She said, “I’ll tell you what it is, Francis. The pair of us are nervous because we’re after getting above ourselves.”

I said, “Speak for yourself.”

“I am doing. Here’s us wanting to head off to London and take on the music industry, no less. No more factories for us, thanks very much, not our style, we’re gonna be working for rock bands. What would your mammy say to you, if she knew?”

“She’d want to know who the bloody hell do I think I am. Then she’d give me a clatter round the ear, call me a fecking simpleton and tell me to get a hold of myself. It’d be loud.”

“And that,” Rosie said, raising her pint to me, “that’s why we’re up to ninety, Francis. Just about everyone we’ve ever known in our whole lives would say the same thing: they’d say we’re getting above ourselves. If we fall for that shite, we’ll only end up giving out to each other and making each other miserable. So we need to cop on to ourselves, rapid. Yeah?”

Secretly, I still get proud of the ways Rosie and I loved each other. We had no one else to learn from—none of our parents were shining examples of relationship success—so we learned this from each other: when someone you love needs you to, you can get a hold of your five-alarm temper, get a hold of the shapeless things that scare you senseless, act like an adult instead of the Cro-Magnon teenager you are, you can do a million things you never saw coming. I said, “Come here.” I slid my hands up Rosie’s arms and cupped her cheeks, and she leaned forward and tipped her forehead against mine so that the rest of the world vanished behind the bright heavy tangle of her hair. “You’re dead right. I’m sorry I was a bollix.”