He hovers with one foot on the crossing. Left would take him to Sally-Ann, right would take him home. He turns left.

He decides not to call her back, for as disjointed as her voicemails are, Sally-Ann is far worse on the phone. She’s forever hesitating, as though waiting for her first sentence to reach its destination before embarking on the second. Inevitably they end up speaking at the same time and the conversation descends into a Norman Collier–style faulty-mic routine. Instead, he texts her: On my way.

O’Hagan’s is a sports bar and Irish theme pub combined; between each of a dozen or so television screens hangs a pithy limerick picked out in Gaelic script: “It’s no health if the glass is not emptied”; “The wine is sweet, the paying bitter”; “Go carefully with a full cup.” There’s a match on, and the place is filled with a mixture of football fans and the early evening work crowd, a clashing checkerboard of groups: red and white, black and gray. The voices of the largely male crowd create a deep bass rumble of background noise, a roiling sea of testosterone. He wonders who chose the venue since it doesn’t exactly fit the group’s style.

He forces his way to the bar, ignoring the disgruntled looks of people who have been waiting patiently to be served, too scared or too polite to kick up a fuss. He catches the eye of the girl behind the bar and raises a hand. She comes straight to him. He uses the time while he waits for his pint to scan the crowd, and spots Sally-Ann waving enthusiastically from a booth at the back wall. He acknowledges her with a dip of his head.

Once he has his pint, he makes his way across to her just as the collective rise and fall of an almost-goal cheer cuts across the room. She greets him with a bone-crushing hug and a kiss that misses both cheeks.