She kissed him, chastely, on the cheek, the wetness of her skin when she pulled away adhering like a decal to Danny’s skin. She headed back towards the hill. Danny watched the turbine, the crane, the men hundreds of feet up in the air. When he knew Shauna would be far enough away he turned. He watched her pick her way up the summit, say something to Alice, then Ben, then Alice again, before the girls disappeared down the other side of the hill. Ben watched them go, then looked at Danny. Danny could feel the throb of his pulse in his temples. His head felt simultaneously heavy and airy. He realised he must be high. He didn’t know what being high felt like, but maybe all it felt like was this. He waited until he heard the engine of Alice’s car growl into life on the far side of the hill before he began to make his way back towards his brother.

6

‘So you’re saying she didn’t dump you?’ Ben asked.

The brothers were on the way back to Ballina. They had taken their time leaving Lacken in order to let the girls build an uncatchable lead, and Danny also wanted to make sure his head was clear enough to drive.

‘She kept saying it’s not over, but that she wants time to herself, time apart, something like that.’

‘Goddamn. Did she say what was wrong?’

‘She was talking about going off to college, needing her head straight for ­that—’

‘Fuck off. So what? Everyone has to do that.’

‘She said she thinks I’ve not been the same since I got home.’

‘Not the same how?’

‘In the way I’m acting, I guess.’

‘Of course you’ve been different since you got home. People have experiences, they change,’ Ben continued, gamely and loyally exasperated.

‘She just needs some time to herself, was what she was getting at,’ Danny said, but even as he said this, doubt was creeping in. With every second that passed it was becoming harder and harder for him to retain with any accuracy everything Shauna had said, much less put an order or logic on it. She had not dumped him, had denied it when he asked if that’s what was happening. And yet Danny felt the exchange had the tenor of a dumping, of something breaking, irreparably. She’d walked away insisting she needed time. How could that mean anything good? If it was not a dumping, it seemed an awful lot like the prelude to a dumping.

‘Them lads in the gangster movies,’ Danny said after a while. ‘That have to follow another car out to the desert. I assume nothing good comes of it?’

‘You assume correct,’ Ben said.