‘Correct,’ Guthrie said. ‘For PE and art class. Handy numbers. Ginty, the art teacher, lets us listen to music, long as we agree to “draw our feelings”. A soft goon but an ­all-­right one, Ginty. But, hey, you still out of school yourself like?’

Pell shrugged.

‘Well for some, eh? You ever going to go back?’

The bus was in town now. Further along the quays, set behind a stone wall and a treeline, was the boys’ school. Pell could see the slated peaks of the main building emer­ging from the crowns of the trees.

‘It’s where I’m headed right now,’ Pell said, smiling, already bored with Guthrie.

Nick Munnelly was standing in an alley in the cold at the rear of the Bay Pearl Hotel, smoking and picking at the threads, the linty specks, snarled in the hairs of his forearm. It was something to do. Against the opposite wall of the alley was a skip brimming with bin bags. On the cobbled ground were crushed Styrofoam cups, plastic baggeens, and shreds of newspaper so ­snow-­sodden they did not stir in the wind. Nick cuffed a boot heel against the doorway’s concrete step. The side of his face was rashing into numbness. He was in a ­T-­shirt and a spattered apron. He worked in the hotel kitchen, a muggy, frantic space where the staff sweated through shifts stripped to single layers. The other smokers took their breaks inside, huddled beneath the grille of a ventilation shaft in an old storage room. Nick preferred the open alley, with its ripe rankness and keening draught. The cold was a pleasure to him because he could remove himself from its effect at any moment. But not yet: the true pleasure of relief, like any pleasure, was in its anticipation. Being able to go inside afterwards would be better than having stayed inside in the first place.

Sean the Chinaman poked his head out the door.

‘Jaysus, lad, it’s nippy,’ Sean said.

Nick said nothing.

‘Your kids are here.’

Nick looked at Sean.

‘Boy and a girl?’

‘Yeah,’ Sean said. ‘A boy and a girl.’

Sean’s actual name was Heng Chen. He changed it because Irish people couldn’t handle the pronunciation. This mildly incensed Nick. Any grown human who couldn’t manage Heng even, just Heng, after a few sincere attempts was being a purposefully ignorant fuck. Nick tried to explain this to Sean, but Sean, diplomatic as the woefully outnumbered must always be, said that he was happy to go with Sean. It was what some people did when they came over, he said, picked a native name. A Chinaman called Sean. It was funny, Nick thought, or maybe it wasn’t.

‘Nick?’

Nick shook his head and smiled. ‘That’s my bro and sis, you daft cunt. What age do I look?’