‘Cockneys are East London. I’m North.’

‘Ah, sorry. It’s all the same to me,’ he said, and grinned. Looked over. ‘Catholic, then?’ Not all the same to him.

‘Once upon a time.’

He nodded at the TV. Maybe that was still a better answer than saying ‘Protestant’. It was hard to tell. He talked about the border, drifting between decades. How his dad had helped swim cows across a river in the 1960s, how pigs were sedated with Guinness, the night a couple of people had drowned trying to get across when he was a kid. Matty pictured the map and its waterways – the rivers, loughs and hills that made their own boundaries, and how the border ploughed through them on its own, brutal path.

Cormac was talking about the roads either side of the lough, blown up and filled in and blown up again. ‘All very Mad Max,’ he said, a lightness to his tone that Matty knew was not the truth. He gave a sigh that suggested that was the end of it and put his feet up on the table next to Matty’s. He’d taken his shoes off the last time he’d gone to the kitchen. His socks had cartoon reindeers on them.

‘Nice.’ A nod at them.

He uncrossed his feet and crossed them the other way round. ‘Enough of that. I’ll arrest you for antagonising a guard.’

They grinned at each other, both turned to the TV again at the same time. The edges of the smiles just shaved off. You’d arrest me if you knew, thought Matty.

‘Do you really like her?’ He spoke more quietly, and there was a rock-plunge feeling, chest to stomach. It wasn’t because he’d mentioned Brigid again.

Matty swallowed, a dry noise in the back of the throat, looking past him to the scrunched napkins on the table. Couldn’t lie, somehow.

Cormac blinked and shifted. ‘Ah, I know how it is. She’s got a way of making you feel guilty, has my sister.’ He looked at the TV, and Matty knew he understood everything. Almost everything. ‘It’s just – she takes things seriously. You know, after all the shit she went through.’

A nod, uncertain.

‘You know about her marriage, right?’

They were supposed to have a mutual friend. ‘Not in detail. Just—’ there was no trace of anyone else in the house. Brigid had only mentioned him once. ‘That it stopped.’

‘He got another woman up the duff. Not even a woman – a girl. Worked behind the counter at their local shop.’

‘Shit.’