If asked, he would find it difficult to explain why he liked Nina so much. She was very pretty, but so were lots of girls. It was possible that Tess was even prettier, and he didn’t fancy her. The best answer he could come up with was that she was like him – and not like him. She was similar enough for him to relax in her company, different enough to provide a challenge. He’d gone out with several girls at college. Variations on a theme, they’d been blonde, Benetton-wearing and full of talk. He’d enjoyed a good deal of fumbling, and sometimes more, on sagging sofas in shared houses in Rathmines and Ranelagh. None of the UCD girls had captivated him the way Nina did. There was another complicating factor. Nina, bless her innocence, thought that he was like her, that he was all fired up by college. In truth, Tom hated his course. Nina was under the impression that he’d got a two-one in his first year commerce exams. In fact, he’d scraped a pass. Fergal knew the real story, and Tom had had to buy his silence with a ten spot of hash and a night of free beer. In a way, failing would have been preferable. Once his parents had got over their disappointment, he would have been free. Free to do what, he couldn’t say. But he would have found something. Instead, he was facing into another soul-sapping year at UCD where the concrete merged with the sky and eighteen-year-olds thought their opinions were all that mattered.

Commerce had been the wrong choice. He’d picked it to please his parents, who’d wanted him to do something useful. His career-guidance teacher had been the same. ‘Choose a course that will get you a job,’ she’d said. Tom’s reply, that he’d prefer to study something that would make a difference, had been met by a condescending smile. No doubt, she’d heard the same line a thousand times before.

There were days when he envied the certainty of Nina and Conor. They made life sound so clear-cut. Tom knew that no decision was straightforward. Every day, without fail, he thought of the decision he’d made on the night of his parents’ party. And every day he questioned it. He saw that night with frightening clarity: the snow, the scene in the back kitchen, the way he’d acted like nothing was wrong. He thought, too, of the days afterwards when he’d had opportunities to speak but had chosen not to. More than once, he’d asked himself if it was too late to say something now. He could talk to Conor, see what he thought. Then he’d changed his mind. He would have to stick by his decision.