‘No. She just started trying to nudge him along, hurry the whole thing up. She dropped hints about how much she missed him when he had to go home, and how she wanted to have babies and she wasn’t getting any younger . . . She had to be extra careful, because the last thing she wanted was him getting all noble and giving her up because she deserved better, or getting paranoid that she was sticking holes in the condoms. It was—’ Lucy’s hands go over her face and she laughs into her fingers, a laugh with a sob caught in it. ‘Jesus, it would’ve been hysterical, if it wasn’t so insane.’

‘How’d Joe react?’

‘I was praying he’d do the grand renunciation. I was trying to send him thought-waves. I’m not even joking.’ Another half-sob of laughter. ‘But nope: Joe just followed right along where Aislinn was taking him. Three weeks ago – just after New Year’s – he told her he was going to leave his wife.’

McCann, who used to brag to Aislinn’s mother about how he’d never leave his family. She’d fed all that into the shredder. I say, ‘I bet she was delighted with that.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Lucy wipes her hands down her face. This is taking a lot out of her. ‘Yeah, she was over the moon. Except Joe wanted to wait till summer. One of his kids is doing the Leaving Cert; Joe didn’t want him upset till that was over.’

‘Meaning Ash would have six more months of trying to juggle him and Rory.’

‘Yeah. She wasn’t happy about that, at all. She cried – not hard enough to be ugly, of course, just a cute little tear – and she told him she knew there would be something else after that, men never left their wives, it was so hard to watch him go home to another woman, blah blah blah. But Joe wouldn’t budge.’

‘So what did she do about it?’

‘God . . .’ Lucy grimaces, eyes closing. ‘Aislinn was so, so badly out of her depth. This was real stuff, you know? Twenty-five-year marriages, kids . . . There was no way she could keep up. Not a chance. All she could think of to do was keep Joe nervous, basically. She was still being Perfect Girlfriend, but every now and then she’d show him some Facebook picture of someone’s baby and sigh, or she’d let it slip that some client at work had flirted with her . . . She just kept poking him, nice and delicately, with the chance he could lose her if he didn’t get off his arse.’

I ask, ‘Did she ever tell him about Rory? Even a hint?’