Jim clapped his hands. Would you like a drink, Cushla?

My friend’s getting me one.

He left Penny looking from Michael to Cushla. How do you know each other? she said. She was smiling, but there was something else in the look that made Cushla feel uncomfortable. And where was Michael’s posh Dublin wife?

I know everybody, said Michael. Have you seen Philadelphia, Here I Come before, Cushla?

I know nothing about it, she said.

Jim came back, his fingers threaded around three whiskies. Their glasses made a genial ring as they clinked. Cushla looked at the floor, wishing she had something to do with her hands.

Gerry returned with lager dripping from his wrist, sideburns constricted into tight curls. He handed Cushla a rum and Coke and took a slug from his pint, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. Michael was looking at her expectantly.

Gerry, this is Michael Agnew, she said.

Hello, said Gerry, his moustache a fringe of beer froth.

Michael said hello, then introduced Jim and Penny.

After a few interminable seconds Jim punched Michael lightly on the shoulder. We thought you’d gone underground, Agnew, he said. Almost imperceptibly, they turned away.

Gerry raised his eyebrows at their backs. You know who they are, don’t you? he said.

Michael was in the bar one night. I’ve only just met the other two, said Cushla, her voice scarcely above a whisper in the hope that Gerry would lower his.

He asked her if she went to the theatre much, a variation on ‘do you come here often?’, a pathetic question to ask on a second date. She wanted to tell him she had hardly been out in two and a half years, that since her father died she had cleaved herself to her mother and the house, in a sort of heartsick stasis, but who’d want to hear that? No, she said.

Thanks for coming, he said. I thought you were avoiding me.

Why would I do that? she said. She had been avoiding him. When he dropped her home from the party he had launched himself across the gearstick at her, his tongue out before he’d reached her lips, lunging twice to find her mouth. An excruciating effort he must have thought was expected of him.

OK, well, that’s good. I was afraid it would be awkward.

As she opened her mouth to answer, an announcement came over the tannoy, the performance will start in five minutes, and she was spared the trouble of answering.

Gerry said he was sorry they were so far from the stage, but Cushla liked their seats at the very back, watching the audience come through the side doors, edging along the rows. Another announcement, the performance will begin in one minute. Far below, Penny took her seat, then Jim. Michael was behind them, bending sometimes to talk to someone as he inched across. When he reached his seat he paused, his back to the stage, eyes moving slowly over each row until they seemed to rest on Cushla. She looked to her left, expecting to see someone holding a hand up at him in greeting, but the woman next to her was reading the programme.