‘It is.’

Matty could see how Joe seemed to assimilate the weight of that, of how much of it might have been attributed to his leaving. Wanted him to feel that.

He didn’t say anything for a while. ‘How long have you been in Ireland? What made you come looking here? I mean, I didn’t even know I’d end up here again.’

Deep breath. Joe remembered Clive – ‘pretty hard to knock that fella out of your memory’, he said – before Matty listed the places stopped at, the swimming, which he couldn’t quite get over. How Maureen had talked about a place beginning with Ros in Donegal.

‘Is that what she said?’ He looked puzzled.

‘Yeah. On the west coast. A small place.’

His face cleared. ‘Rossnowlagh,’ he said. ‘It’s a beach a few miles away. Not quite in Donegal. Went there with a mate a couple of times to skid around on motorbikes. He had a cousin who was a surfer up there and I had a go. I was shite.’ He smiled. ‘It’s where Franklin and Sheanna have gone. I had a soft spot for it, so when we saw that land was for sale here, it seemed right.’

Rossnowlagh. Just a few miles from here, and from Brigid. Matty felt the three syllables settle, and watched the fire. ‘You’re not in the phone book.’

‘No. Ex-directory. It’s easier. We don’t get much bother, but – just in case.’

‘Made it a lot harder to fucking find you.’

‘I realise that. Now. If I’d have known you were looking.’ A weary, understated smile. ‘I always thought you wanted shot of me.’

‘I thought about you every day,’ Matty said, the words lean, and saw something in Joe fold, quietly shatter. He put his head down, and when he looked up again, his eyes were glistening. It was an effort to keep Matty’s own tears away. ‘You were in my head.’ Accusatory. Finger, jabbing temple.

They sat, both caged in their own grief, as the rain came down, harder.

‘I have to tell you something,’ Joe said.

There was hardly anything left of Matty to absorb anything new. ‘OK.’

‘I’ve been thinking about how to find you again. Recently, I mean. A lot. Driving Franklin round the bend.’ There was the sound of a car on the road, and he listened to it for a moment. ‘Putting an advert in all the British papers, thinking somebody that knew you would see it, even if you didn’t. Or finding you through the internet somehow. I put a message on a website. You’d be amazed at how much time I’ve been trying to look up North London Ronans.’ His look was almost chiding. ‘You’re not in the phone book either, I might add.’

‘I haven’t really had a proper address.’ All this time, and Matty had been untraceable. Not just Joe.