Tommy was like Superman, in a way, don’t you think? I says to him. What do you mean? Barney says to me. Beyond good and evil, I says. Aye, well, he is now, Barney says, but the thing about Tommy is, he never had an alter ego. And if you’re going to be a superhero you have to have an alter ego because you need to transform yourself into this other thing, this other character completely, this thing what you are actually not. But Tommy was always Tommy; think about it. Tommy was always on. It wasn’t as if he had to run into a phone box and change into a different costume. He was always Tommy, no matter what he was up to, Barney says to me, and then he looks me in the eye for a second, just enough to convey … something. Does he know?

That’s why we’ll always admire him, Barney says to me, no matter what. I think about pushing it. I think about asking him if he knows. But then the music starts and your man Del Brogan is onstage and he’s got a glass of whiskey in his hand. This cunt thinks he’s Como, Barney says. How quickly we forget, I says to myself, as your man Del Brogan launches into ‘The Twelfth of Never’. And now he’s singing about this love what lasts forever, this love what never dies, and the women are on their feet and they’re screaming and it’s pandemonium. The curtain comes up and you can see the band behind him with their second-hand suits and their greasy hair and the wee punk rocker on the drums.

Then he’s into the usual numbers: ‘Maggie May’, ‘Those Brown Eyes’, ‘Hot Legs’, ‘My Wild Irish Rose’, ‘Come Back to Erin’. But then he starts to changing the lyrics. He starts to changing the lyrics and I’m looking round myself to see if it’s just me or if anybody else has noticed, but he’s looking right at me, your man Del Brogan is singing right at me, and I hear that fucking noise again, that fucking sound, and the place is darkened, and the band disappeared, and it’s your man Del Brogan in the spotlight and this noise, this slithering noise, and he is changing the words of the song, he is changing the words to match the song that we have sung, together

Come back to the shore at Carrickfergus

Come back to that fateful Carrick shore

Come back to the shore at Carrickfergus, ocean

And greet the girl who couldn’t love you more

everyone is singing the words they couldn’t possibly know in a voice like distant thunder

Come back to the shore at Carrickfergus

And greet the girl who couldn’t love you more