‘How about we go find a drink?’

James shook his head. ‘Sorry, I have to dash. Another time, yeah? We must get together soon.’

‘How are Carla and the kids? Betsy and I were saying just the other day that you must come down and spend a weekend in Long Island with us. We have the house all fixed up now. It looks terrific. I’ll get Betsy to give Carla a call.’

‘Great, do that. We’ll look forward to that.’

We all stood for a moment not quite sure which way we should all turn, then with a little wave of his hand the Richard person turned right and ran across the road. He couldn’t wait, I decided, to get home to tell Betsy, but maybe no; maybe there was a fraternal instinct that would get to work here. You scratch my back, buddy, and I’ll …

James took my arm just above the elbow. I pulled away from him.

‘How about we go find a drink?’ I sneered in my best New York voice.

I set off along the street heading for the sort of bar he had probably never been into in his life – preferably Irish, I thought, filled with green lights and shamrocks, flashing signs for Guinness and collecting boxes for Noraid on the counter. The sort of bar that I normally wouldn’t be seen dead in. A drum was beating in my head and the street, cars and lights and sidewalk and people passing were splintered and silvered by the tears that gathered behind my eyes. I didn’t bloody want to cry. I was almost running. I bit at the inside of my mouth to inhibit the tears.

I could hear his feet behind me.

Once he called my name.

‘Clara!’

I just scurried on.

Where is your dignity? a voice in my head asked me.

Fuck dignity.

I got the smell of beer and turned into a brown doorway. It was warm and horrible inside and dark. I liked the dark. A woman’s voice wailed about green fields and fiddles played. I pushed my way to the bar, pulled my purse out of my pocket and fumbled in it for money. A pink-faced young man with curly hair smiled at me from the other side of the bar.

‘What’ll it be?’

‘A pint of Guinness and a large Jameson, please.’

He nodded. I took out some notes and put them on the bar. James reached over my shoulder and picked them up and shoved them back into my hand.

‘Clara. This is a grim place. Let’s go somewhere quiet. Somewhere we can talk.’

I put the notes back on the bar and nodded at the young man. He wiggled his eyebrows at me, sensing trouble.

‘I can talk here,’ I said.

‘I can’t even think …’

‘Well, you’re going to have to try because this is where I’m staying.’

The young man put the glass of whiskey down on the counter and shoved a jug of water along the bar towards me.