More often, he cursed the snobbery of others. There were days when he felt as if everybody was ganging up on him, conspiring to make him feel guilty about his life. Sometimes he succumbed. He’d look at Nina, Conor and Tess. There they were, finding their way: Tess a star, the other two with grown-up jobs. And what was he doing? Selling beer and cigarettes to teenagers, and lottery cards to pensioners.

It was funny, he thought, how even among friends nobody wanted to be the one left behind. At school, you longed to be the first name on the team, the first child invited to the party. Fast forward a few years, and while the situations might have changed, the competitive urge remained the same.

That being said, Tom was fond of the shop. There was something seductive about its rhythms and routines. He especially liked chatting to the young lads. He asked about school and home and what they wanted to do with their lives. None of this meant he was a creeping-Jesus, do-gooder type. He just enjoyed the banter. In lots of ways, working in Val’s was like working in the petrol station at home. The customers were entertaining, cranky, brave, lazy, and a million other things besides.

He thought of his own early teens when Kilmitten’s hierarchies had been almost as rigid as those in Dublin. Their gang had tried to sidestep the rules. He wondered how successful they’d been.

Back in the spring, he’d started helping a couple of the young guys with their homework. He might have flunked out of college, but he knew enough to give the boys extra tuition in English and maths. They were bright kids, both adamant they’d be staying on at school to do the Leaving Cert. They had an energy about them that Tom liked. And they made him laugh. He hadn’t told Nina. She thought he’d been working extra hours in the shop. Oh, he knew he should have talked to her. She was a teacher, after all. An enthusiastic teacher. A good one. More than once, she’d accused him of not valuing her work. That was unfair. But Nina’s school might as well have been on a different planet. In St Fachtna’s, all the children had a nice safe home full of books and warm clothes. A slight sniffle and they were brought to the doctor. They never had to worry about money or food or whether their big brother was one stolen car away from jail or their little sister was playing in a park littered with dirty needles. Truth to tell, Tom was nervous about what Nina would make of his amateur teaching.