‘You’re an excitement to everyone, Matty.’ She sounded amused.

‘Thanks a lot.’

‘No, I didn’t mean – I just think he doesn’t know quite what to make of you. Of us.’

Us. She said it with such confidence. Like it had roots.

Matty turned the light off.

Brigid left early, wanting to sort her classroom out before the last half-day of school. Cormac was standing in the kitchen, eating the last of his toast and taking his coat off the chair. A little pale, his hair unkempt.

‘Good morning to you.’ A little bravura in his words.

‘That wine do you in?’

‘No,’ he said, suddenly defensive. ‘Why, what did she say?’

‘Nothing.’

The cat slunk past Matty’s ankles and hissed violently.

That seemed to cheer him up again. ‘You haven’t charmed the cat, then.’

‘She hates me.’

‘She hates everyone. She hates Brigid. That thing has clawed the bejeezus out of me a couple of times for just walking by minding my own business. Athena.’ He shook his head. ‘Goddess of wisdom and war and taking great big lumps out of you.’

Matty couldn’t help a quiet laugh. It was a relief to have someone take the piss out of Brigid.

Cormac glanced over. ‘You look very different when you smile,’ he said, before looking surprised at himself. He gazed at the door, holding his coat formally, turned back as if to say something else, and finally left.

***

On Christmas Eve, Brigid sent Matty out to the shop for some last-minute condiments. She’d had five recipe books out, scraps of paper with calculations pencilled on them. She didn’t seem too worried about the cashier now. Safe in the knowledge that Matty was all hers, obviously.

The girl wasn’t there, anyway. But Sheanna was, standing outside on her own singing to herself, purple earmuffs over her pink hat. She stopped when she saw Matty.

‘All right?’

She nodded, her eyes wide.

‘Those girls do anything else?’

She shook her head and kicked at the base of the plastic charity dog. ‘Ms Kilduff talked to me and then I think she talked to them and then she did a talk in assembly about bullying and how bullies are cowards and the ones that get bullied usually go on to be actors and prime ministers and stuff.’ Kick. ‘I found out how fish make babies.’

‘Did you?’

‘The girl fish lay their eggs and the boy fishes go round and fertilise them. Some fish have boy bits and girl bits. I read it on the World Wide Web. And some fish start out as a girl and then they become a boy and some of them can become girls again.’ She looked, keen-eyed, up at Matty. ‘Is that what you’re doing?’

‘No.’ A smile.