‘Yes,’ said Joe. ‘It’s Mrs Buckley all right.’

Brendan knelt up on his bed and peered out through the curtains. Joe just lay on the camp bed and stared at the ceiling. Through the wall he could hear his father giving out. His voice was full of drink and rose and fell in indignant cadences. He cried out about injustice and freedom and castigated himself for being the possessor of a body too weak to be able to strike the blows that had to be struck. He cried. There was a banging on the wall.

‘Will you shut up,’ shouted Mam’s voice. ‘For God’s sake, and let us sleep.’ Her voice was angry.

Brendan got down from the bed and went out of the room. Joe heard him open the door of his father’s room and go in. He heard the creaking floorboards and the rattle of the bedsprings. His father’s voice quietened. The two men’s voices twisted together, patterned in his mind with the voices in the street, turned after a while into the jigging tune he had heard on the radio. Killing time my friend now we have time to kill kill the shadows killing time kill the fire kill the fire killing time kill the swan the shadows on our … then soon, remarkably soon, there was nothing.

In the morning when he woke it was as if nothing had happened. Brendan’s smell blanketed the small room. Downstairs his mother was grey and cross and only spoke to tell him to hurry up or he’d be late for school.

‘What happened at the Buckleys after?’

‘Get on with your breakfast.’

He knew it was no use discussing anything with her.

He got home from school on time that afternoon. He had loitered the whole way along the streets, pausing at corners, resting his arm from the weight of his school bag, staring into windows, counting the speckled patches of blue in the sky, but she never appeared. The wind had got up to almost storm force and the cardboard and plywood fillings in the broken windows banged and rattled, sounding like demons in behind the walls trying to batter their way out into the sleet-chilled air. He felt let down. Perhaps she had gone home another way, just to avoid seeing him. Perhaps he had bored her to death yesterday. He had a quick vision of her lying interestingly dead among the cushions on the divan. The doctor putting his instruments into his bag. Boredom killed her. A massive overdose of boredom. Poor girl. Poor nice girl. Laughter choked out of him and a woman passing with a shopping bag looked curiously at him. It’s well for some to find anything to laugh at, her face seemed to say.

Two men were hammering plywood into place covering the Buckleys’ empty windows. A very small child laboured up the hill on a very small tricycle, pushing the ground away from under him with his feet.

They were talking to each other in low voices across the table when he went into the kitchen, leaning towards each other, like plotters, as if they needed to drop their words quietly, directly into each other’s ear. Brendan straightened up when his brother came into the room and nodded. Mr Logan continued to talk. The air was heavy with cigarette smoke, the table and the floor around it were littered with papers. Dirty dishes were stacked by the sink.