Brigid’s fingers lolled in the water. ‘Well, I think you’re special. Unique.’

There it was. ‘I don’t want to be unique. I just want to … get on with it.’ A hand, sweeping over the slicked-back hair into a 1950s greaser’s. ‘Be nothing to anyone.’

There’d been a friend of Bee’s, a towering Scouse nightclub dancer, who’d told the doctor about wanting to be a woman in order to get the hormones. Matty couldn’t face doing the same, and didn’t know if it would be right anyway. The thought of going to a doctor to even ask about hormones, or surgery, caused a nauseating dread.

‘Nothing?’

‘Just not a – thing.’

‘I understand.’

Matty laid one arm on top of the other, looked straight at her. ‘I don’t want to be a she, most of the time, and I don’t want to be a he, not all the time. It’s no one’s business.’

‘No. It’s not.’ Her words disappeared into the steam.

Cheek, chewed. Matty felt bunched up, darkly coiled. Dale had thought it his business. Made it his business. ‘Is it still all right to borrow the car tomorrow?’

‘Sure. But can I take you somewhere? It’d be better. Seeing as you’re not on the insurance. And for your wrist and all.’

‘I’ll drive safe. I think it’s healed now.’ Healed enough, anyway. She was looking over, waiting for more. ‘I’m just looking in on an old friend.’ Matty still didn’t want to say his name. In case it made him less real, rather than more so.

‘You didn’t say.’

Shrug.

‘OK, then. Promise to look after it?’ Brigid flicked water over, a comical doink. And again.

Matty sat back. Slid a leg straighter, foot right between her thighs. ‘Yeah.’ Toe, digging softly in. Anything to stop her talking about being special, unique.

Brigid exhaled, a wide sound that echoed off the walls.

***

A cold, flinty day. North and west, the big roads became smaller, potholed ones. The wrist still hurt. Matty tried to minimise it, stay in fourth until the engine started sputtering, but the discomfort was unavoidable. The map on the passenger seat slid off on one particularly fast bend.

It felt strange being so low down, after the height of Shifty’s seats. But there was also a heady rush of independence, going further than just down to the lough or the shop. The big sky and new mountains up ahead.

‘Are you coming back?’ Brigid had said that morning in the kitchen. Half joking. Half not.

The breadth of the sky and the speed of the clouds brought optimism, focus. Back to Joe, and what would be said if he was found. I’m the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? To some quaint village, and him, startled, in the centre of it all.