‘You’re a liar.’

Joe took a step backwards, away from him.

‘I am not. Ask her. That’s all you have to do. Ask her.’

‘Is anything wrong up there?’

An anxious voice from the bottom of the stairs.

Brendan was coming across the floor after him, his bare feet squeaking on the lino.

He reached out and grabbed Joe by the back of the neck,

‘Lying little shite,’ and began shaking him.

‘Boys. Brendan. Joe.’

Her footsteps started on the stairs.

‘It’s all right, Mam,’ called Brendan. The footsteps stopped.

‘I even know his name. She loved him yesterday. She talked about him yesterday. She writes him letters telling him everything.’

Brendan hit him across the face with the palm of his hand.

‘Everything.’

Slap.

‘Mammy, he’s hitting me.’

‘For the love of God.’

The door banged open and she stood looking at them.

‘Brendan. Leave the child alone.’

‘I’ll leave him alone when I’ve finished with him.’

‘What’s he done to you?’

Her face was distracted.

‘He’s a bloody little liar.’

‘Fred Burgess is his name.’

He wriggled out of Brendan’s grip and dashed behind his mother.

‘F.R.E.D.’

‘Will ye shut up and give a man a chance to sleep?’ A roar came from Dad’s room.

Brendan made a grab at Joe.

‘Burgess. Do you want me to spell that too?’

‘Brendan. I don’t know what it’s all about …’ She put out both her arms to stop him.

‘And he’s a soldier.’

Brendan stood quite still and looked at him.

‘Liar.’ He said the word uncertainly.

‘Joe,’ begged Mam.

There was nothing stopping him now though.

‘A British soldier. She wears a ring, you know. And she tells him everything.’

He stepped cautiously on to the top step.

‘Wait,’ he said with madness in his voice, ‘till she tells him what you told her last night.’

He was away off down the stairs. He pulled his anorak off the hook and opened the hall door.

‘Ask her,’ he shouted over his shoulder as he ran up the street. Curtains twitched with curiosity. He needn’t have bothered running, Brendan never moved.

Joe ran for a long time without realising where he was going. His heart was hammering so hard inside him that it felt no longer as if it were in his chest, but as if it had escaped and was thudding in his legs and his head, even his hands felt as if they were going to burst. Gradually he slowed down to a walk and his heart returned to the correct position in his body. His head ached. He had an amazing thirst. He found himself on the road that runs out along the river towards the border. The city was behind him. The high warehouses were behind him and the bombed-out shops, ‘business as usual’, scrawled bravely on the doors. He passed the bus depot and the army barracks and the neat houses with their front gardens rimmed with raked flower beds. The wind blew aimless seagulls across the sky and the river moved, silver, towards the lough. Nothing could stop that. Then it was country, and high trees leant in winter loneliness against the tumbling walls of the big houses. Cattle searched in the fields for grass. The bare hills came closer with every step he took.