Faithful Place

23

I left my family alone while Stephen put together his case, and while he charged Shay with two counts of murder, and while the High Court turned Shay down for bail. George, God bless his cotton socks, let me come back to work without saying a word; he even threw me a new and insanely complicated operation, involving Lithuania and AK-47s and several interesting guys named Vytautas, on which I could easily work hundred-hour weeks if I felt the urge, which I did. Squad rumor claimed that Scorcher had filed an outraged complaint about my general lack of protocol, and that George had surfaced from his usual semicoma long enough to hit him with several years’ worth of nitpicky paperwork requesting further information in triplicate.

When I figured my family’s emotional pitch might have dropped a notch or two, I picked an evening and got home from work early, around ten o’clock. I put whatever was in the fridge between two slices of bread and ate it. Then I took a smoke and a glass of Jameson’s finest out onto the balcony, and phoned Jackie.

“Jaysus,” she said. She was at home, with the telly going in the background. Her voice was blank with surprise; I couldn’t tell what else was under there. To Gavin: “It’s Francis.”

An unintelligible mutter from Gav, and then the TV noise fading as Jackie moved away. She said, “Jaysus. I didn’t think… How’re you getting on, anyway?”

“Hanging in there. How about you?”

“Ah, sure. You know yourself.”

I said, “How’s Ma doing?”

A sigh. “Ah, she’s not great, Francis.”

“What way?”

“She’s looking a bit peaky, and she’s awful quiet—and you know yourself, that’s not like her. I’d be happier if she was giving out right and left.”

“I was afraid she’d have a heart attack on us.” I tried to make it sound like I was joking. “I should’ve known she wouldn’t give us the satisfaction.”

Jackie didn’t laugh. She said, “Carmel was telling me she was over there last night, herself and Darren, and Darren knocked over that porcelain yoke—you know the one of the little young fella with the flowers, on the shelf in the front room? Smashed it to bits. He was afraid for his life, but Mammy didn’t say a word, just swept it up and threw it in the bin.”

I said, “She’ll be all right in the long run. Ma’s tough. It’d take more than this to break her.”

“She is, yeah. Still, but.”

“I know. Still.”

I heard a door shutting, and wind catching at the phone: Jackie had taken this conversation outside, for privacy. She said, “The thing is, Da’s not the best either. He hasn’t got out of the bed, ever since…”

“Fuck him. Leave him there to rot.”

“I know, yeah, but that’s not the point. Mammy can’t manage on her own, not with him like that. I don’t know what they’re going to do. I do be over there as much as I can, and so does Carmel, but she’s got the kiddies and Trevor, and I’ve to work. Even when we’re over, sure, we’re not strong enough to lift him without hurting him; and anyway he doesn’t want us girls helping him out of the bath and all. Shay…”

Her voice trailed off. I said, “Shay used to do all that.”

“Yeah.”

I said, “Should I go over and give a hand?”

There was a startled instant of silence. “Should you…? Ah, no; no, Francis. You’re all right.”

“I’ll get my arse down there tomorrow, if you think it’s a good idea. I’ve been staying clear because I figured I’d do more harm than good, but if I’m wrong…”

“Ah, no; I’d say you’re right. Not meaning that in a bad way, like; just…”

“No, I get you. That’s what I thought.”

Jackie said, “I’ll tell them you were asking after them.”

“You do that. And if anything changes down the road, just let me know, yeah?”

“I will, yeah. Thanks for the offer.”

I said, “What about Holly?”

“What d’you mean?”

“Is she going to be welcome over at Ma’s, from now on?”

“Do you want her to be? I thought for sure…”

“I don’t know, Jackie. I haven’t got that far yet. Probably not, no. But I do want to know exactly where she stands.”

Jackie sighed, a small sad flutter. “Sure, no one else knows that either. Not till… you know. Till things sort themselves out a bit.”

Till Shay had been tried and acquitted, or else convicted and put away for life twice over, either way due at least partly to what kind of job Holly did giving evidence against him. I said, “I can’t afford to wait that long, Jackie. And I can’t afford to have you being coy with me. This is my kid we’re talking about.”

Another sigh. “Being honest with you, Francis, if I was you I’d keep her away for a bit. For her own sake. Everyone’s a mess, everyone’s up to ninety, sooner or later someone’s going to say something that’ll hurt her feelings—not meaning to, but… Leave it for now. Do you think that’d be all right? It wouldn’t be too hard on her, like?”

I said, “That I can deal with. But here’s the thing, Jackie. Holly’s flat-out positive that what happened to Shay is her fault, and that even if it isn’t, the whole family thinks it is. Keeping her away from Ma’s—not that I have any problem with that, believe me—is only going to leave her more convinced. Frankly, I don’t give a fuck if it’s one hundred percent true and everyone else in the family’s decided she’s a leper, but I need her to know that you’re the exception here. The kid is in pieces, and she’s already lost enough people to last her a lifetime. I need her to know that you’re still in her life, that you’ve got no intention of abandoning her, and that you don’t for one instant blame her for the anvil that’s after landing on all of our heads. Is any of that going to be a problem?”

Jackie was already making horrified sympathetic noises. “Ah, God love her, the poor little dote, how would I blame her—sure, she wasn’t even born when all this started! You give her a big hug from me and tell her I’ll be round to see her the second I get a chance.”

“Good. That’s what I figured. It doesn’t matter what I tell her, though: she needs to hear it from you. Can you give her a ring, set up a time to go hang out with her? Put the poor kid’s mind at ease. OK?”

“I will, of course. Come here, let me go do that now, I hate the thought of her sitting there getting herself all worried and upset—”

“Jackie,” I said. “Hang on a sec.”

“Yeah?”

I wanted to smack myself across the back of the head for asking, but it came out anyway. “Tell me something, while we’re on the subject. Am I going to be hearing from you again, too? Or is it just Holly?”

The pause only lasted a fraction of a second, but that was long enough. I said, “If that’s not on the cards, babe, I’m OK with it. I can see where you’d be having trouble here. I just like knowing what the story is; I find it saves time and hassle all round. Does that not sound fair enough?”

“Yeah. It does. Ah, God, Francis…” A quick catch of breath, almost a spasm, like she’d been gut-punched. “Course I’ll be back in touch. Course I will. Just… I might need a little while. A few weeks, maybe, or… I’m not going to lie to you: my head’s melted. I don’t know what to do with myself. It could be a while before…”

“Makes sense,” I said. “Believe me, I know the feeling.”

“I’m sorry, Francis. I’m really, really sorry.”

Her voice sounded thin and desperate, frayed to the last thread. It would have taken an even bigger sonofabitch than me to make her feel worse. I said, “Shit happens, kid. This wasn’t your fault, any more than it was Holly’s.”

“It was, but. If I hadn’t brought her over to Mammy’s to begin with…”

“Or if I hadn’t brought her that specific day. Or, better yet, if Shay hadn’t… Well, there we go.” The rest of the sentence unraveled into the empty air between us. “You did your best; that’s all anyone can do. You go unmelt your head, babe. Take your time. Call me when you’re done.”

“I will. Honest to God, I will. And, Francis… you look after yourself, meanwhile. Seriously, now.”

“Will do. You too, honeybunch. See you out there.”

Just before Jackie hung up, I heard that fast, painful catch of breath again. I hoped she would go in to Gavin and let him hug her, instead of standing outside in the darkness, crying.

A few days later I went to the Jervis Centre and bought the kind of King Kong telly that you buy if the possibility of saving up for anything more substantial has never entered your universe. I felt it would take more than electronics, no matter how impressive, to stop Imelda from kicking me in the goolies, so I parked my car at the top of Hallows Lane and waited for Isabelle to get home from wherever she went all day.

It was a cold gray day, sky heavy with sleet or snow waiting to fall, thin skins of ice on the potholes. Isabelle came down Smith’s Road walking fast, with her head down and her thin fake-designer coat pulled tight against the slicing wind. She didn’t see me till I got out of the car and stepped in front of her.

I said, “Isabelle, yeah?”

She gave me a wary stare. “Who wants to know?”

“I’m the prick who smashed your telly. Nice to meet you.”

“Fuck off or I’ll scream.”

And a chip off the old block personality-wise, too. The kid gave me the warm fuzzies all over. I said, “Dial it down a notch there, Penelope Pitstop. This time I’m not here to give you hassle.”

“Then what d’you want?”

“I brought you a new telly. Happy Christmas.”

The suspicion on her face got deeper. “Why?”

“You’ve heard of a guilty conscience, yeah?”

Isabelle folded her arms and shot me the filthies. Up close, the resemblance to Imelda was still there, but not as strong. She had the round Hearne nub of a chin. “We don’t want your telly,” she informed me. “Thanks all the same.”

I said, “Maybe you don’t, but your ma might, or your sisters. Why don’t you try them and find out?”

“Yeah, right. How do we know that yoke wasn’t robbed two nights ago, and if we take it you’ll be round to arrest us this afternoon?”

“You’re overestimating my brainpower.”

Isabelle raised an eyebrow. “Or you’re underestimating mine. ’Cause I’m not thick enough to take anything off a cop who’s pissed off with my ma.”

“I’m not pissed off with her. We had a little difference of opinion, it’s been resolved, she’s got nothing to worry about from me.”

“Better not. My ma’s not scared of you.”

“Good. Believe it or not, I’m fond of her. We grew up together.”

Isabelle considered that. “Then what’d you smash our telly for?” she demanded.

“What does your ma say?”

“She won’t.”

“Then neither will I. A gentleman never divulges a lady’s confidences.”

She threw me a withering look to show that she wasn’t impressed by the fancy talk, but then she was at the age where nothing I did would have impressed her anyway. I tried to imagine what it was like, seeing your daughter with breasts and eyeliner and the legal right to get on a plane to anywhere she wanted. “Is that yoke meant to make sure she says the right thing in court? ’Cause she already gave her statement to that young fella, what-d’you-call-him, Ginger Pubes.”

A statement that she could and presumably would change several dozen times by the time the trial came along, but if I had felt the urge to bribe Imelda Tierney I wouldn’t have needed to blow the budget; I could have stuck with a couple of cartons of John Player Blue. I figured I was better off not sharing that with Isabelle. I said, “That’s nothing to do with me. Let’s get this much straight: I’ve got nothing to do with that case, or that young fella, and I don’t want anything off your ma. OK?”

“You’d be the first fella who didn’t. Seeing as you don’t want anything, can I go now, yeah?”

Nothing moved on Hallows Lane—no old ones out polishing their brasswork today, no yummy mummies in buggy wars, all the doors shut tight against the cold—but I could feel eyes in shadows behind the lace curtains. I said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Whatever.”

“What do you work at?”

“What do you care?”

“I’m the nosy type. Why, is it classified?”

Isabelle rolled her eyes. “I’m taking a course to be a legal secretary. Is that all right with you, yeah?”

I said, “It’s great. Well done.”

“Thanks. Do I look bothered what you think of me?”

“Like I told you, I cared about your ma, back in the day. I like knowing she’s got a daughter making her proud and looking after her. Now let’s see you keep up the good work and bring her this bleeding telly.”

I flipped open the boot. Isabelle moved around to the back of the car—keeping her distance, in case I was planning to push her in there and sell her into slavery—and had a look. “ ’S not bad,” she said.

“It’s the pinnacle of modern technology. Do you want me to bring it to your place, or do you want to get a mate to give you a hand?”

Isabelle said, “We don’t want it. What bit of that are you not getting?”

“Look,” I said. “This yoke cost me good money. It’s not robbed, it doesn’t have anthrax on it and the government can’t watch you through the screen. So what’s the problem here? Is it just the cop cooties?”

Isabelle looked at me like she wondered how I managed to put on my boxers right way round. She said, “You grassed up your brother.”

And there we all were. I had been the big dumb sucker all over again, thinking it might not turn into public knowledge: if Shay had kept his mouth shut there was always the local ESP network, and if that had had an off day there had been nothing to stop Scorcher, in one of the follow-up interviews, from dropping just one tiny little hint. The Tierneys would happily have taken a telly that had fallen off the back of a lorry—probably they would have taken one off Deco the friendly neighborhood drug dealer, if he decided he owed them for whatever reason—but they wanted nothing to do with the likes of me. Even if I had felt like defending myself, to Isabelle Tierney or to the fascinated watchers or to every living soul in the Liberties, it would never have made one drop of difference. I could have put Shay in intensive care, maybe even in Glasnevin cemetery, and spent the next few weeks collecting approving nods and pats on the back; but nothing he had done was a good enough excuse for squealing on your own brother.

Isabelle glanced round, making sure there were people near and ready to come to the rescue, before she said—nice and loud, so those same people could hear her—“Take your telly and shove it up your hole.”

She jumped back, quick and agile as a cat, in case I went for her. Then she gave me the finger to make sure no one missed the message, spun on her spike heel and stalked off down Hallows Lane. I watched while she found her keys, vanished into the hive of old brick and lace curtains and watching eyes, and slammed the door behind her.

The snow started that evening. I had left the telly at the top of Hallows Lane for Deco’s next client to steal, taken the car back home and started walking; I was down by Kilmainham Gaol when the first rush came tumbling to meet me, great perfect silent flakes. Once it started, it kept on coming. It was gone almost as soon as it touched the ground, but Dublin can go years without even that much, and outside James’s Hospital it had turned a big gang of students giddy: they were having a snowball war, scraping handfuls off cars stopped at the lights and hiding behind innocent bystanders, red-nosed and laughing, not giving a fuck about the outraged suits huffing and flouncing on their way home from work. Later, couples got romantic on it, tucking their hands in each other’s pockets, leaning together and tilting their heads back to watch the flakes whirl down. Even later, drunks picked their way home from the pubs with triple-extra-special care.

It was somewhere deep inside the night when I wound up at the top of Faithful Place. All the lights were out, just one Star of Bethlehem twinkling in Sallie Hearne’s front window. I stood in the shadows where I had stood to wait for Rosie, digging my hands into my pockets and watching the wind sweep graceful arcs of snowflakes through the yellow circle of lamplight. The Place looked cozy and peaceful as a Christmas card, tucked in for the winter, dreaming of sleigh bells and hot cocoa. On all the street there wasn’t a sound, only the shush of snow being blown against walls and the faraway notes of church bells ringing some quarter hour.

A light glimmered in the front room of Number 3, and the curtains slid open: Matt Daly, in his pajamas, dark against the faint glow of a table lamp. He leaned his hands on the windowsill and watched the snowflakes falling on cobblestones for a long time. Then his shoulders rose and fell on a deep breath, and he pulled the curtains closed. After a moment the light clicked out.

Even without him watching, I couldn’t make myself take that step into the Place. I went over the end wall, into the garden of Number 16.

My feet crunched on pebbles and frozen weeds still holding on in the dirt where Kevin had died. Down in Number 8, Shay’s windows were dark and hollow. No one had bothered to close his curtains.

The back door of Number 16 was swinging open on blackness, creaking restlessly when the wind caught it. I stood in the doorway, watching the dim snow-blue light filtering down the stairs and my breath drifting on the frozen air. If I had believed in ghosts, that house would have been the let-down of a lifetime: it should have been thick with them, soaking the walls, cramming the air, keening and flittering in every high corner, but I had never seen anywhere that empty, empty enough to suck the breath out of you. Whatever I had come looking for—Scorcher, bless his predictable little heart, would presumably have suggested closure or some equivalent chunk of arsebiscuit—it wasn’t there. A sprinkle of snowflakes swirled in over my shoulder, lay for a second on the floorboards and were gone.

I thought about taking something away with me or leaving something behind, just for the sake of it, but I had nothing worth leaving and there was nothing I wanted to take. I found an empty crisp packet in the weeds, folded it and used it to jam the door shut. Then I went back over the wall and started walking again.

I was sixteen, in that top room, when I first touched Rosie Daly. It was a Friday evening in summer: a gang of us, a couple of big bottles of cheap cider, twenty SuperKing Lights and a pack of strawberry bonbons—we were that young. We had been picking up days on the building sites on our school holidays, me and Zippy Hearne and Des Nolan and Ger Brophy, so we were brown and muscly and in the money, laughing louder and wider, thrumming with all that brand-new manhood and telling amped-up work stories to impress the girls. The girls were Mandy Cullen and Imelda Tierney and Des’s sister Julie, and Rosie.

For months she had slowly been turning into my own secret magnetic north. At nights I lay in bed and was sure I felt her, through the brick walls and across the cobblestones, drawing me towards her down the long tides of her dreams. Being this close to her pulled at me so hard I could barely breathe—we were all sitting against the walls, and my legs were stretched out so near Rosie’s that if I had moved just a few inches, my calf would have been pressed to hers. I didn’t need to look at her; I could feel every move she made right inside my skin, I knew when she pushed her hair behind her ear or shifted her back against the wall to get the sun on her face. When I did look, she made my head stop working.

Ger was sprawled on the floor, giving the girls a dramatic based-on-a-true-story account of how he had single-handedly caught an iron girder that had been about to plummet three stories onto someone’s head. All of us were half giddy, on the cider and the nicotine and the company. We had known each other since we were in diapers, but that was the summer when things were changing, faster than we could keep up. Julie had a stripe of blusher down each plump cheek, Rosie had on a new silver pendant that flashed in the sun, Zippy’s voice had finally finished breaking, and all of us were wearing body spray.

“—And then your man says to me, ‘Son,’ he says, ‘if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be walking out of here on my own two feet today—’”

“D’you know what I smell?” Imelda asked no one in particular. “Bollix. Lovely fresh bollix.”

“And you’d recognize those,” Zippy said, grinning at her.

“Dream on. If I ever recognized yours, I’d top meself.”

“It’s not bollix,” I told her. “I was standing right there, saw the whole thing. I’m telling yous, girls, this fella’s a real-life hero.”

“Hero, me arse,” Julie said, nudging Mandy. “The state of him. He wouldn’t have the strength to catch a football, never mind a girder.”

Ger flexed a bicep. “Come over here and say that, you.”

“Not bad,” Imelda said, lifting an eyebrow and tapping ash into an empty can. “Now show us your pecs.”

Mandy squealed. “You dirtbird, you!”

“You’re the dirtbird,” Rosie said. “Pecs is just his chest. What’d you think it was?”

“Where’d you learn words like that?” Des demanded. “I never heard of these pec yokes before.”

“The nuns,” Rosie told him. “They showed us pictures and all. In biology, you know?”

For a second Des looked gobsmacked; then he copped on and threw a bonbon at Rosie. She caught it neatly, tossed it into her mouth and laughed at him. I thought about punching him, but I couldn’t come up with a good excuse.

Imelda gave Ger a little cat grin. “So are we seeing them or not?”

“D’you dare me?”

“I do, yeah. Go on.”

Ger winked at us. Then he stood up, wiggled his eyebrows at the girls and inched his T-shirt coyly up his belly. All of us whooped; the girls started giving him the slow clap. He peeled off the T-shirt, whirled it around his head, tossed it at them and struck a muscle-man pose.

The girls were laughing too hard to keep clapping. They were collapsed together in the corner, heads on each other’s shoulders, holding their stomachs. Imelda was wiping away tears. “You sexy beast, you—”

“Ah, God, I think I’m after rupturing myself—” from Rosie.

“That’s not pecs!” Mandy gasped. “That’s a pair of diddies!”

“They’re grand,” Ger said, injured, dropping the pose and inspecting his chest. “They’re not diddies. Here, lads, are they diddies?”

“They’re gorgeous,” I told him. “Bring them here to me and I’ll measure them for a lovely new bra.”

“Fuck off, you.”

“If I had those I’d never leave the house again.”

“Fuck off and die. What’s wrong with them?”

“Are they meant to be all squishy?” Julie wanted to know.

“Give us that back,” Ger demanded, waving a hand at Mandy for his T-shirt. “If yous don’t appreciate these, I’m putting them away again.”

Mandy dangled the T-shirt from one finger and looked at him under her lashes. “Might hang on to it for a souvenir.”

“Janey Mac, the smell off that,” Imelda said, batting it away from her face. “Mind yourself: I’d say you could get pregnant just touching that yoke.”

Mandy shrieked and threw the T-shirt at Julie, who caught it and shrieked louder. Ger made a grab for it, but Julie ducked under his arm and jumped up: “’Melda, catch!” Imelda caught the shirt one-handed on her way up, twisted away from Zippy when he got an arm around her and was out the door in a flash of long legs and long hair, waving his shirt behind her like a banner. Ger went thumping after her and Des held out a hand to pull me up on his way past, but Rosie was leaning back against the wall and laughing, and I wasn’t moving until she did. Julie was tugging down her pencil skirt on her way out, Mandy threw Rosie a wicked look over her shoulder and called, “Hang on, yous, wait for me!” and then all of a sudden the room was quiet and it was just me and Rosie, smiling a little at each other across the spilled bonbons and the near-empty cider bottles and the curls of leftover smoke.

My heart was going like I had been running. I couldn’t remember the last time we had been alone together. I said—I had some confused idea about showing her I wasn’t planning a lunge—“Will we go after them?”

Rosie said, “I’m grand here. Unless you want to…?”

“Ah, no; no. I can live without getting my hands on Ger Brophy’s shirt.”

“He’ll be lucky to get it back. In one bit, anyway.”

“He’ll survive. He can show off his pecs on the walk home.” I tipped one of the cider bottles; there were still a few swigs left. “D’you want more?”

She held out a hand. I put one of the bottles into it—our fingers almost touched—and picked up the other. “Cheers.”

“Sláinte.”

The summer stretch had come into the evenings: it was gone seven, but the sky was a soft clear blue and the light flooding through the open windows was pale gold. All around us the Place was humming like a beehive, shimmering with a hundred different stories unfurling. Next door Mad Johnny Malone was singing to himself, in a cheerful cracked baritone: “Where the Strawberry Beds sweep down to the Liffey, you’ll kiss away the worries from my brow…” Downstairs Mandy shrieked delightedly, there was a tumble of thumping noises and then an explosion of laughter; farther down, in the basement, someone yelled in pain and Shay and his mates sent up a savage cheer. In the street, two of Sallie Hearne’s young fellas were teaching themselves to ride a robbed bike and giving each other hassle—“No, you golf ball, you’ve to go fast or you’ll fall off, who cares if you hit things?”—and someone was whistling on his way home from work, putting in all the fancy, happy little trills. The smell of fish and chips came in at the windows, along with smart-arse comments from a blackbird on a rooftop and the voices of women swapping the day’s gossip while they brought in their washing from the back gardens. I knew every voice and every door-slam; I even knew the determined rhythm of Mary Halley scrubbing her front steps. If I had listened hard I could have picked out every single person woven into that summer—evening air, and told you every story.

Rosie said, “So tell us: what really happened with Ger and the girder?”

I laughed. “I’m saying nothing.”

“Wasn’t me he was trying to impress, anyway; it was Julie and Mandy. And I won’t blow his cover.”

“Swear?”

She grinned and crossed her heart with one finger, on the soft white skin just where her shirt opened. “Swear.”

“He did catch a girder that was falling. And if he hadn’t it would’ve hit Paddy Fearon, and Paddy wouldn’t’ve walked out of there tonight.”

“But…?”

“But it was sliding off a stack down in the yard, and Ger caught it just before it fell on Paddy’s toe.”

Rosie burst out laughing. “The chancer. That’s typical, d’you know that? Back when we were little young ones, like eight or nine, Ger had the lot of us convinced that he had diabetes, and if we didn’t give him the biscuits out of our school lunches, he’d die. Hasn’t changed a bit, has he?”

Downstairs Julie screamed, “Put me down!” not like she meant it. I said, “Only these days he’s after more than biscuits.”

Rosie raised her bottle. “And fair play to him.”

I asked, “Why would he not be trying to impress you, as well as the others?”

Rosie shrugged. The faintest pink flush had seeped onto her cheeks. “Maybe ’cause he knows I wouldn’t care if he did.”

“No? I thought all the girls fancied Ger.”

Another shrug. “Not my type. I’m not into the big blondie fellas.”

My heart rate went up another notch. I tried to send urgent brainwaves to Ger, who in fairness owed me one, not to put Julie down and let people head back upstairs; not for another hour or two, maybe not ever. After a moment I said, “That necklace’s lovely on you.”

Rosie said, “I’m only after getting it. It’s a bird; lookit.”

She put down the bottle, tucked her feet underneath her and got up on her knees, holding out the pendant towards me. I moved across the sun-striped floorboards and knelt facing her, closer than we had been in years.

The pendant was a silver bird, wings spread wide, tiny feathers made of iridescent abalone shell. When I bent my head over it I was shaking. I had chatted up girls before, all smart-mouthed and cocky, not a bother on me; in that second, I would have sold my soul for one clever line. Instead I said, like an idiot, “It’s pretty.” I reached out towards the pendant, and my finger touched Rosie’s.

Both of us froze. I was so close I could see that soft white skin at the base of her throat lifting with each quick heartbeat and I wanted to bury my face in it, bite it, I had no clue what I wanted to do but I knew every blood vessel in my body would explode if I didn’t do it. I could smell her hair, airy and lemony, dizzying.

It was the speed of that heartbeat that gave me the guts to look up and meet Rosie’s eyes. They were enormous, just a rim of green around black, and her lips were parted like I had startled her. She let the pendant drop. Neither one of us could move and neither one of us was breathing.

Somewhere bike bells were ringing and girls were laughing and Mad Johnny was still singing: “I love you well today, and I’ll love you more tomorrow…” All the sounds dissolved and blurred into that yellow summer air like one long sweet peal of bells. “Rosie,” I said. “Rosie.” I held out my hands to her and she matched her warm palms against mine, and when our fingers folded together and I pulled her towards me I couldn’t believe it, I couldn’t believe my luck.

All that night, after I shut the door and left Number 16 empty, I went looking for the parts of my city that have lasted. I walked down streets that got their names in the Middle Ages: Copper Alley, Fishamble Street, Blackpitts where the plague dead were buried. I looked for cobblestones worn smooth and iron railings gone thin with rust. I ran my hand over the cool stone of Trinity’s walls and I crossed the spot where nine hundred years ago the town got its water from Patrick’s Well; the street sign still tells you so, hidden in the Irish that no one ever reads. I paid no attention to the shoddy new apartment blocks and the neon signs, the sick illusions ready to fall into brown mush like rotten fruit. They’re nothing; they’re not real. In a hundred years they’ll be gone, replaced and forgotten. This is the truth of bombed-out ruins: hit a city hard enough and the cheap arrogant veneer will crumble faster than you can snap your fingers; it’s the old stuff, the stuff that’s endured, that might just keep enduring. I tilted my head up to see the delicate, ornate columns and balustrades above Grafton Street’s chain stores and fast-food joints. I leaned my arms on the Ha’penny Bridge where people used to pay half a penny to cross the Liffey, I looked out at the Custom House and the shifting streams of lights and the steady dark roll of the river under the falling snow, and I hoped to God that somehow or other, before it was too late, we would all find our way back home.