‘Hey.’ The motorbike guy was standing a couple of feet from the table, holding a nearly empty pint. A big square silver ring on his index finger.

‘All right.’

‘How was it?’ Spoken like they were old friends.

‘Pretty good.’

‘You go far?’

‘To the end and back.’

He let out a single laugh. ‘Geez. I walked half of it and that felt far enough.’

I probably swim faster than you walk, mate, Matty thought.

‘I’m impressed.’ He had a sure, lazy-sunshine drawl. A lot of freckles. He kept looking, glanced at his drink, looked again. Affable enough, intrigued rather than suspicious. ‘You like rum?’

What the hell. ‘Yeah. I guess.’

Trevor was from San Diego. Tattoos crawled all over him, and he rolled up his sleeves and pulled down the collar of his jacket to show them off. The Harley sign, the pirate woman, the snake and the apple, the big cross. Every time he mentioned Jesus, Matty took another gulp of rum.

‘You got any Irish in there?’

‘My dad.’

‘Me too. Way back somewhere.’ That was it. He was looking proud, emboldened. Looking for that common ground, the green thread of noble Oirishness, however faint. He started talking about his great-grandmother, of family trees and some heirloom. Of California, and how when the rain came it was an event and roofs caved in. ‘Bet your roofs are a bit more solid for that sort of thing,’ he said, looking up.

Matty stared at the ceiling and didn’t say anything.

‘So, what do you do?’

Swim Sleep Eat. In that order. Even when Matty was sleeping, the dreams were of water – of coursing through it, fully submerged, gilled.

That wasn’t what he meant, of course. He’d already gone on about some dot-com company he was working for, the bright new future.

‘Different things. Camps for kids. Activity stuff. Working behind a bar sometimes.’ Heather would let Matty pull pints at The Haggerston when there was no money to pay her for rent. ‘Whatever’s going.’

‘Good for you, dude. Awesome.’ He would have said that no matter what the answer had been. ‘A maverick. We should get you on over to the West Coast. You and that van of yours would fit in a treat.’ He smelt peppery, cigar smoke maybe, and there was a bearish quality to him, equal parts placidity and pheromones.

Matty held up the glass, letting the liquid tilt. ‘Another?’

‘You bet. That’s the spirit,’ he said, and slammed his hand down on the bar at his own joke.

He definitely had the mouth for his supposed Irish heritage. He didn’t shut up. Read all day long, he said. Loved Irish literature, better than anything else, and was going to visit a restaurant with a load of first editions tomorrow. ‘You should really read him. I thought all you Irish knew Joyce.’

‘Nope.’ Matty mostly read Stephen King novels.