Ben was Danny’s older brother. He lived in Dublin. Danny shook his head.

‘He’s down tonight on the train. Only I’ve to meet that bandit of an accountant Morrison this evening and I can’t get out of it. Would you be OK to pick him up?’

‘I was going to head to Shauna’s,’ Danny said. Shauna Vaughan was Danny’s girlfriend.

‘So that’s a no?’ JJ sighed.

‘No, I can,’ Danny relented. ‘I can get him, no bother.’

‘Good man,’ JJ said. As they talked, JJ unbuttoned the cuff of his left shirtsleeve, rolled it up and commenced rubbing methodically at his forearm. Danny saw what he always saw when his father did this: the glossy, serpentine streak of pale scar tissue that ran from JJ’s wrist almost up to his elbow. Danny’s father had been in a car crash years ago, back when he was not much older than Danny, and his left arm had been smashed to pieces. Danny had seen the pictures from that time; an implausibly younger JJ lying in a hospital bed with a look of sheepish forbearance on his face, the arm suspended above him on a rig. In another picture, JJ drinking a beer in their living room, sitting on a garish orange and brown sofa Danny did not remember in an Italia 90 jersey, aiming a defiant ­thumbs-­up to the camera, a device called a fixator attached to his arm. The fixator resembled miniature scaffolding, an arrangement of rods and pins sunk into the skin of his arm and which he had worn for months until his bones had knitted back together. JJ still suffered regular spells of pain in the arm, as well as his back and neck. Danny was eighteen now and had been only three months old at the time of the crash. He and his mother Helen had not been in the car, but Ben had.

‘Be good to see him,’ Danny said.

‘Has he not been down since you got back?’ JJ asked.

‘He has not.’

‘I’ve a picture in my head, clear as day, of the four of us sat having dinner together, like a month ago.’

‘I can assure you that did not happen.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ JJ said, letting go of his arm and sighing with satisfaction. ‘You’ll be at Shauna’s for the night, I suppose?’

‘Probably.’

‘Are you heading into town?’

‘Whatever Shauna wants.’

‘It’s Friday night. Will that young one not want to be out dancing?’

‘Shauna likes a dance. It’s not my thing.’

‘You don’t go dancing with her?’

‘She dances with her mates.’

‘Ah, lad,’ JJ sighed.

‘Shauna doesn’t mind if I don’t dance.’