The last time Rosie Daly and I touched was on a Friday, nine days before Zero Hour. Town was crisp and cold and packed that evening, all the Christmas lights on and the shoppers hurrying and the street hawkers selling wrapping paper five for a pound. I wasn’t a huge fan of Christmas in general—my ma’s crazy always hit its impressive annual peak at Christmas dinner, so did my da’s drinking, something always wound up broken and at least one person always wound up in tears—but that year it all felt unreal and glassy, right on the edge between enchanting and sinister: the shiny-haired private-school girls singing “Joy to the World” for charity were just a little too clean and blank-faced, the kids pressing their noses up against Switzer’s windows to stare at the fairy-tale scenes looked just a little too drugged on all that color and rhythm. I kept a hand in the pocket of my army parka as I headed through the crowds; that day of all days, the last thing I wanted was to get robbed.

Rosie and I always met in O’Neill’s on Pearse Street—it was a Trinity student pub, which meant the wanker count was a little high, but we didn’t stick out and there was no chance of running into anyone we knew. The Dalys thought Rosie was out with the girls; my family didn’t give a damn where I was. O’Neill’s is big, it was filling up fast and billowing with warmth and smoke and laughter, but I picked out Rosie right away by that burst of copper hair: leaning on the bar, saying something to make the barman grin. By the time she paid for our pints I had found us a table in a nice private corner.

“Little tosser,” she said, putting the pints on the table and nodding backwards at a clump of snickering students up at the bar. “Tried to look down my top when I leaned over.”

“Which one?”

I was already getting up, but Rosie threw me a look and pushed my pint towards me. “Sit down there, you, and drink that. I’ll sort him myself.” She slid onto the bench next to me, close enough that our thighs touched. “That fella there, lookit.”

Rugby jersey, no neck, turning away from the bar with his precarious double handful of pints. Rosie gave him a wave to get his attention back; then she batted her lashes, leaned forward and swirled the tip of her tongue in little circles in the head of her pint. Rugby Boy’s eyes popped, his mouth fell open, he got his ankles tangled in a stool and half his pints went down someone’s back. “Now,” Rosie said, giving him the finger and forgetting about him. “Did you get them?”