The next day me and Tommy are sitting drinking cans of green in the garden when we see Miracle Baby getting chased by a bunch of boys on actual real Choppers. They corner him and they cut the string of his balloon and it takes off (a single milk-white teardrop, rising up) and we can hear them taunting him, that’s not a fucking Chopper, you mong, they’re saying to him, that’s not a bike, that’s a fucking wheelchair. Me and Tommy go barrelling over and they take off in fright. Wee Miracle Baby is crying. It’s not a Chopper, he says to Tommy, you made it up, they don’t do three-wheeled Choppers. And Tommy says to him, no, you’re wrong, what you’ve got is a deluxe Chopper, imported from London. What you’ve got is the best bike of all. But it doesn’t even say Chopper on it, Miracle Baby says to him. That’s cause they’re fake Choppers, those ones that the bad boys have, Tommy says to him. That’s why they had to write Chopper on the side of them, otherwise nobody would believe them. Why would they need to do that if they were real? And somehow Miracle Baby is convinced. Now I feel sorry for them, he says. Don’t burst their bubble, Tommy says to him. And don’t let on about the three-wheeled Choppers to anyone. Let’s keep it to ourselves. And Miracle Baby races off on this top-grade bicycle that was rescued from a midden and that was probably worth about ten pence, if that, even.

*

Then I see Kathy in the street with Davy, the two of them sat on a bench in Bankmore Square, off the Dublin Road, with the leaves falling from the trees, so as it must have been October of ’77. She’s wearing a short fur coat and she’s lying up against him on the bench and she’s got her head on his shoulder, maybe she’s sleeping. He’s reading a newspaper and wearing a pair of dark sunglasses. It’s too late for me to turn around. I have to walk past them. I start to whistle to myself. Back then everybody was a whistler. This weather you would probably get lifted for it. But I start to whistle this tune, ‘The Old Bog Road’. Davy looks up at me as I pass. I’m standing as close to him as you are to me but it’s like I’m not even there. It’s like he’s looking right through me. He doesn’t recognise me at all, just goes back to reading his paper. Kathy shifts on the bench but doesn’t open her eyes. Before I know it I’m past them and I’m walking away. And that’s when I hear it.

Davy has picked up on the tune I was whistling and he’s carrying it on himself. A ghost, I tell myself. I’m a ghost, come in. Then I hear him sing. He even sounds a bit like Tommy. He starts to sing the words to the song.