‘Tadhg’s dead, Eoin,’ Lorraine protested, and her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. ‘It was his twentieth birthday in two weeks’ time but he’s never going to see it because he’s dead. He’s never going to graduate, he’s never going to be a pharmacist, he’s never going to get married, he’s never going to have children. He can’t see the sky today. He can’t see the sunshine. This isn’t a temporary inconvenience as far as he’s concerned, like it seems to be for you. His life is over for ever, Eoin. You’ll be throwing shapes all around the city centre next week but he’ll be lying under the ground, in the dark, not breathing, inside a box.’

Eoin shrugged and looked away, with his lips pursed, as if he didn’t want to hear.

Cormac said, ‘Maybe we should talk this over later, like. What happened to Tadhg, Jesus, it put all of our hearts crossways, you have to admit. Myself, I keep thinking that I only dreamed he was murdered, and that any minute now he’s going to come strolling in as usual with his Egg McMuffin, stinking out the lab like he always used to.’

More students were arriving now, taking their places at the laboratory benches with a loud scraping of stools and chattering loudly to each other. Their professor, Dr Griffin, would be coming in soon to outline what medications they would be preparing today, and explaining their effects and possible side effects – how the very same preparation could cure one patient but make another patient seriously ill, or even kill them.

The four remaining members of the High Five separated and sat down. Eoin was sulking and when he lit his Bunsen burner he kept turning the flame up so high that it roared and then back down again, as if he were expressing his frustration in a fiery Morse code.

Kevin was about to go over and try to calm him down when a broad-shouldered man in a red baseball cap and a black leather jacket came backing in through the laboratory door, carrying a large cardboard box.

‘I’ve a delivery here from Medisure,’ he announced. ‘I think it’s a sentifroogway.’

Cormac stood up and looked at the label. ‘Oh. You mean a centrifuge.’

‘Whatever it is, it’s fierce heavy so is there somewhere I can set it down?’

‘Put it on the side here,’ said Cormac, so the man shuffled his way along the aisle and heaved the box down on the workbench that ran along the right-hand wall, grunting with effort.

‘They’ve signed for it already downstairs,’ the man told him. ‘I only fetched it up here myself because it weighs a fecking ton. There. Whatever it is you young geniuses do with a sentifroogway, I wish you joy of it.’

He gave them a salute and walked out, leaving the door open behind him.

*