Sheanna had tiptoed back in, with her swear jar.

Later, Franklin brought Matty a cup of tea. ‘I made some sandwiches, if you’d like one?’

‘No. Thanks.’

He nodded, hesitated. There was something more humble in his stance. ‘OK. Well, they’re there, if you want them. Just …’ He began to turn away.

‘You took him away from me.’

He stopped as if caught, a torchlight flashed in his face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Not forever. How was Joe to know what your mother would do, hiding you away so he couldn’t find you?’

‘Don’t blame it on her,’ Matty said, and looked squarely him. ‘This is on you. And now he’s dying.’

He looked choked. Nodded again, a shine to his eyes behind his glasses. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘I know.’

They watched the news. Garda annual leave had been cancelled and hospitals had extra staff in the event of automation failures. Everyone would be watching Australia and New Zealand carefully.

It went on to a piece about the Millennium Dome in Greenwich, with aerial camera shots.

‘It looks like an alien spaceship,’ said Sheanna.

‘It looks like a feckin’ disaster is what it looks like,’ said Joe. ‘An alien spaceship would be more useful. Take us off this planet before the Millennium Bug sends us all into meltdown.’

Matty went swimming, in a T-shirt and shorts. Joe had said he didn’t believe that Matty liked swimming in the cold. The three of them had stood on the jetty and watched as Matty swam halfway out to the island and back, though in truth it was hard and there’d been an hour-long bath afterwards. Joe had taken a photo.

***

New Year’s Eve. It had been three days, and Cormac had still not come. Sheanna was up even earlier than usual, and ripped open her presents, of which there were many, in the living room.

Matty had gone to get a drink and stopped in the doorway, retreated. Joe was weeping quietly in the kitchen, and Franklin holding him.

In the afternoon, eight of Sheanna’s classmates came round for a party. Franklin had said they should cancel, and Joe said that no way were a raft of guards going to come and ruin Sheanna’s afternoon, and that they’d all be on Millennium Bug duty now anyway. There’d been a fierceness in his voice.

A cake had been delivered. Pink, with a stereotypical mermaid, tail curled up, on the top. The kids had run around on a sugar-high after that, with the two parents that had stayed to help trying to shush them all. Joe had sat in the kitchen, watching the madness with an exhausted, valiant look on his face.

‘Do you want some mermaid?’ Sheanna said, almost colliding with Matty and holding up a deformed figure. ‘I saved you the tail.’