There’d been no university, or even college. Exams had been a write-off, apart from PE and geography. Rosa had found the results slips crumpled in the kitchen bin, and over another dinner that neither of them finished, the conversation had quickly degenerated into the usual – she railing that she had done everything she could, and Matty biting back before giving up.

But, over the years, Matty had still gone to a library and opened encyclopaedias, starting somewhere and following a trail, hefting a different one over to the corner table. Whales to echolocation to the harmonic series. Coral to asexual reproduction to DNA. It was still easy to feel stupid, though, even if Matty could coil a climbing rope, coil and tail, and could do a C-to-C roll in a kayak.

In the guidebook, there was an insert on the Sheila-na-Gigs, crudely carved stone figures of females with legs outspread, prising open their own black, gaping vulvas.

Matty closed the book.

The last J. Ronan on the list was further north. But it was exhausting, even to think about it. Both times, the garage and the flat next to the charity shop, there had been relief mixed in with the disappointment. More relief than anything else, in truth. This last one – it could really be him.

The middle of Ireland was veined with water. A blue spine of it on the map, a different sort of route. Matty turned left instead of right at the next junction, down a lesser road, tinsel hanging from fir trees. Black fields either side, the peat laid in stacks under plastic.

Still cold – water lingered under the skin. Hungry, too, after no lunch. Sometimes Slim-Fast didn’t do the trick. Here was a small town, with a sunbed shop and a takeaway advertising Mekong Asian food. The girl behind the counter was neither, pale olive skin, brown hair with blond streaks in it, and a single dangling earring, rhombus-shaped.

Matty’s voice stayed low. ‘All right?’

‘I might be,’ she said. Listless.

‘Yeah?’

‘When my shift finishes.’ Not an Irish accent. Lilting, but not quite the same as the Greeks and Turks back in Golders Green. She took the order, soullessly ringing up the price on the cash register.

‘When do you get off, then?’ A little warmer, the protective side coming out.

‘Four hours.’ An eye-roll.

A twangy, Chinese-sounding electric guitar was playing through a boxy speaker high up in the corner. Matty waited underneath it, the sole of one foot resting on the wall behind, listening to the sound of two men, a younger and an older voice, shouting in what was probably Vietnamese behind the beaded curtain.

The cashier was leaning her elbows on the counter, reading a Harry Potter book – or at least holding it up, her eyes repeatedly lifting to the clock above a laminated photo of goo-covered chicken legs.