‘Do you want to? Talk, I mean? Tell me what happened?’

I push back in my seat and nod, though this will be for Adana, not for me. I’ve told this made-up story so many times over the years I know it word for word and can narrate it on autopilot – distanced, unemotional. A fiction that almost seems real to me now.

‘Sure. Most of it you already know. The house caught fire late one night, after a party. My parents had a lot of parties – they’d put my housewarming to shame.’ I smile. ‘I was never allowed to join them – they weren’t those kind of parties and they weren’t those kind of parents.’

‘So, no kids bouncing on the trampoline while Mammy serves wine with one hand and orange cordial with the other?’

‘Definitely not. Anyway, I was away at boarding school when it happened. That particular night, the party went on late, and soon after the last guests left, the house went up in flames. They said it was a cigarette. That simple. My dad, having a nightcap, fell asleep, cigarette fell on to the rug. He was so drunk he slept right through it. My mother the same, only she was upstairs in bed.’

‘Jesus. I knew most of this from when you told us that night in college, but God, it’s just so …’

That night in college. Sitting in the bar in UCD, eking out our last pints, Adana, Mark and me. The flickering candle between us. The realization that I couldn’t keep fobbing off these new friends whose homes I’d been to, whose parents I’d met. Mine are dead. It came out of nowhere. I live with my grandmother. She’s not well. She doesn’t like visitors. End of story. But no, not end of story.

How did they die? Of course they were going to ask that. Six pints in, they were never not going to ask that. A fire, I said, watching the candle flicker between us. Regretting it as soon as the words were out. Explaining to Mark and Adana why they hadn’t seen it in the papers. We lived in London. It wouldn’t have been in the papers over here. The fictional trust fund and made-up boarding school, to explain how and where I lived. The presumption of wealth that I didn’t dispel. The big house of my stories, so beautifully different from reality. The big house that burned to the ground. They haven’t asked much about it over the years but it comes up every now and then, usually over drinks. Like tonight. And then I try to keep it vague.

‘Yeah. A lot of what happened after is blurry. It was decided that it was best to keep me at boarding school and then, as you know, I came to Ireland for college and lived with my grandmother until she died. And look – didn’t I turn out OK?’ I force a smile. I hate this. I do it on autopilot every single time I’m asked. But I hate it. Especially with Adana. And Mark. Jesus. Mark.