She lit another cigarette. How did you know? she said, as he put the mug in front of her.

I wasn’t sure, until you didn’t turn up at school. When I heard his name on the radio, I remembered how he was with you in the Lyric. I felt awkward when I came back with the drinks at the interval, as if I was interrupting. You were standing so close to him. And that evening in the pub, before we went to the pictures. He wasn’t one bit happy to see me. Did you love him?

Yeah, she tried to say, but nothing came out of her mouth. She took a drag of the cigarette.

How long were you seeing him?

A couple of weeks after that night in the theatre he came into the bar and asked me to teach him and his friends Irish.

That was original, I’ll say that for him.

I know how it sounds, but he wasn’t like that, she said. Remember that night, when you said he was all right? He was.

I didn’t mean you should start riding him, he said, raising his eyes to hers. Tears had begun rolling down her cheeks. She wiped them with the back of her hand. He reached to take it and stopped. Shit, he said. There was blood gathering in the webbing between her fingers and thumb. He opened her fist. Her palm was dented with the half-moon shapes of her fingernails and the puncture had split wide open. Go over to the sink and start rinsing that hand, he said. Where do you keep your plasters?

In the bathroom.

She watched the tomatoey juices swirl down the plughole. Gerry came back with a roll of Elastoplast and a tube of Germolene. Poor Lavery, he said softly.

After he left, she went upstairs and lay on her bed. She took the pile she had assembled last night. The Irish books, Betsy Gray. The copy of The Black Prince she’d been too giddy to read. A bar of soap wrapped in waxed paper printed with the name of the hotel in Dublin. A punt that had the metallic smell of a used note, Lady Lavery’s long fingers on a beer-stained cheek. A single brass key. The novena she’d bought, that Michael had found silly. They were the mementoes of a mooning teenager. Siobhán de Buitléar had got his life. His child. His death.

The bang of the front door, heels across the wood. Since she was a child, Cushla could read Gina’s steps. Short and clipped when she was angry. Light when she was sneaking a drink. Erratic, now; she was drunk.

She got up and went downstairs to the kitchen.

I’ve all the details, Gina said, taking a bottle of Jameson from her bag and two tumblers from the cupboard. And this was poor Michael’s tipple of choice.