‘Call me what you like, but I can only see this ending in grief, I truly can, and I’m no fortune teller.’

‘Feargal, do what I fecking tell you to do, will you, boy? And this time, don’t forget your glasses. Any harm comes to that Gráinne and I won’t be quick to forgive you.’

‘Who’s Gráinne?’ said Barry’s wife, Megan, coming into the kitchen with a washing basket under her arm.

‘Mind your own fecking business,’ said Barry. ‘Gavin – Feargal – I’ll catch you after at The Cotton Ball.’

Megan went through to the alcove where the washing machine and the tumble dryer were installed and started to sort through the dirty clothes in her basket. She was a tall, thin woman, with long black hair tied back in a ponytail. She had a slightly Spanish look about her, with large dark eyes and pouting lips, and when she was younger she had been pretty enough to model for three of the fashion shows held by Brown Thomas, the Cork department store. But five years of marriage to Barry Riordan had taken their toll on her. She had aubergine-purple circles under her eyes, and bruises on her left cheek and on her wrists, and underneath her jeans she had bruises on her thighs and on her buttocks too.

Gavin and Feargal left without even acknowledging that she had come into the room. They knew that if they gave her a friendly ‘howya’, Barry might get it into his head that they were trying to come on to her, or that she was coming on to them, and beat her for it.

In Barry’s world, reality was the way that Barry saw it, and if anybody dared to see it differently, they would almost always suffer for it, one way or another.

‘Them eggs was like fecking cement,’ he said, pushing his plate away. ‘And they was cold, too. Maybe one day before I go to meet my Maker you’re going to find out how to fecking cook.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Megan, cramming sheets and pillowcases into the washing machine. She had learned long ago not to retort that he always dawdled over his food and smoked while he was eating it, so it was bound to go cold, and scrambled eggs were bound to solidify.

Barry scraped back his chair and stood up. He was short, at least seven centimetres shorter than Megan, with a large head that was handsome but had a Neanderthal look about it, with deep-set eyes and a heavy jaw. His brown hair was combed forward in a point over the middle of his forehead to hide where it was receding, and he was unshaven. His tight black sweater emphasized his beer-keg chest, and his sleeves were tugged up to expose his hairy forearms.

He stood unnervingly close behind her, so close that she could smell the tobacco on his breath.