Joe would have said, I hope you gave those beggars a shiner. Knocked out their bloody teeth. He would have marched up to the head’s door, given him an earful, become friendly. Got the boys suspended, not Matty.

It was always Matty’s fault. The fighting worked, though, just about. One of the boys fractured a finger, and after that the insults kept coming, but no one got too close.

It did nothing but rain all day. A constant white noise on Shifty’s roof. ‘Dear God, the rain,’ Joe had said once, holding Matty’s shoulders as if in desperation. ‘It never bloody stops. You know how humans are eighty per cent water? Well, the Irish are ninety-five per cent water. We cry rain.’ He’d leant down, his voice lowering, a time when he could still delight Matty with his very occasional swearing. ‘We piss rain.’ A wink.

Leg stretch. A car park next to a graveyard with a massive soaked Jesus. One thing for the real crucifixion – however shit it had been, at least it probably wouldn’t have been raining on him as well. Matty had a quick fag, hood up, wandering underneath the dark clot of the yew trees, reading the inscriptions. There was a man in navy overalls, kneeling in front of a headstone, scraping at it. A cigarette hanging from his mouth, too, straight. He nodded at Matty. The letters were splodged with black so that you couldn’t read the name.

There had been a lot of loitering in graveyards back in North London. The only two half-decent friends from school weren’t bothered that Matty didn’t have black-painted nails and steel-capped platform boots. Goths were very tolerant. They would sit in Wood Green Cemetery, or even make pilgrimages to Abney Park, Kensal Green or Mile End, the nice ones, like taking a death-themed school trip. Matty would listen to Michelle and Martin – ‘the three “M”s’, one of the dickheads at school would say, ‘mong, mong and mong’ – crooning along to Sisters of Mercy on their shared Walkman headphones. Would kick the nearest headstone, imagine it carved with ‘JOSEPH RONAN: DROWNED TRAGICALLY’ or ‘JOSEPH RONAN: BELOVED FATHER AND BARNET SUPPORTER’ or whatever felt right that night.

It was impossible to not think of it, even now, even after finding the letter. Impossible not to have an eye on each stone, just in case. Not to come out of every bit of wild water thinking he’s not in there, having made sure. Another lake, river, the sea even. The Ponds had wound into Matty’s blood, and the ghost-feelings in with it.

24/11/99

LOUGH _____, Air 8°C, Water 9°C, 1km

There were public toilets here, deserted. Into the Men’s. A starling shot up to the roof, the panic loud in its wings, before it found its way out, Matty’s heart settling again.