the mud and turned one sharp merciless eye on me; I blew a long stream of smoke at it, and it took off in a riot of wings and skimmed away over the wall.
I knew we had thrown a party at the beginning of July, that summer, once the Leaving Cert was done and our parents went off traveling and the three of us moved into Hugo’s. There had been one for Leon’s birthday, so that had to have been around the third week of August; and there had been another one sometime in September, a last hurrah before everyone went off to college at the beginning of October. That one was too late, if Faye had spent September in France. The first one was too early; we had only just moved in, she wouldn’t have had time to start showing up. That left Leon’s birthday.
Leon hadn’t had a lot of friends to invite, but I was pretty sure a decent handful of my mates and Susanna’s had shown up, and probably some people who didn’t actually count as any of our mates—everyone knew the Ivy House parties were good ones. Sean and Dec would have been there, whichever of the other guys happened to be around, Susanna’s gaggle and likely a few of the cooler girls from her school who fancied bagging a rugby player. And Dominic, I was positive he had been there, for whatever that was worth: Dom laughing, glitter of moonlight and coke in his eyes, Leon in a headlock scrabbling uselessly at his arm, smell of jasmine and happy raucous singing everywhere in the swaying dark, For he’s a jolly good fellow!
Which was the other thing. What Faye had said about Dominic giving Leon and Susanna hassle: could that possibly be what Martin had been on about? Faye had told Rafferty I wouldn’t have been happy about it, Rafferty had translated that into me having some big vendetta against Dominic? It felt like a stretch, but it was the closest I had to something that made sense.
And: assuming Faye hadn’t imagined or misinterpreted the whole thing, what exactly had been going on between Dominic and my cousins? I couldn’t remember him ever paying much attention to Susanna—Dom hadn’t gone for the nerdy type: he had occasionally cracked some dirty joke or tossed out some sexist comment so he could laugh at her Outraged Feminist mode, but he had hardly been the only person who did that. I did remember him giving Leon shit now and then, but again, it had been routine shit, the kind Leon had been taking from plenty of people ever since we were about twelve—fag jokes, lisps and limp wrists; when I happened to be around I had told the guys to back off, but it hadn’t seemed like a particularly big deal. Given the state Dominic had been in that summer, though, who knew: could he have ramped things up a level or two? Although surely Leon would have told me, surely I couldn’t have missed or forgotten that—
I wasn’t about to ask either Susanna or Leon the story. Martin’s visit had shifted, very subtly, the way I thought about them, about our positions on this new surreal chessboard where we had somehow found ourselves; even though I knew that was probably exactly what Martin had been aiming for, I couldn’t help it. Instead I rang Sean and asked him when would suit him and Dec to come over.
* * *
They came the next evening, which moved me more than I could have told them even if I had wanted to. I got the message across by giving Sean shit for having gained a few pounds and giving Dec shit about Jenna—“Man, there’s what, half a million women in Dublin? At least one of them has to be single and sane, but no—”
“And have low standards,” Sean pointed out.
“There’s that.”
“What are you on about?” Dec demanded, injured. “I’m employed and I’ve got all my hair. That’s more than a lot of blokes.”
“You’re a narky bollix,” I told him. “I wouldn’t put up with you.”
“I’m not a— Melissa. Honestly, now. Am I a narky bollix?”
“You’re lovely.”
“See?”
“What else is she going to say? She’s a nice person, you’re sitting right there—”
The kitchen table where we had spent so many teenage evenings, loaded now with bright-patterned serving bowls—pasta, salad, Parmesan—and scraped plates and half-full wineglasses, tousled orange flowers and tarnished silver candlesticks. Hugo was laughing, chin propped on his woven fingers, candlelight flickering