‘Ah, a purpose. We all need one of those. I must get one, one of thesedays.’ He was helping me out, I knew that. He’d noticed how I was shifting awkwardly. ‘Look, I’m sorry, asking all those questions. It’s just that… I don’t know.’
‘It’s all right.’ I didn’t know where the lines were either.
‘Whatever happened to that man your mum used to go out with? What was his name?’
‘Finty. Finty Somethingorother. O’Brien. Finty O’Brien.’
‘Finty! That was him. Tattoo ofsome woman’s name.’
‘Bernadette. It looked as though it had been inked by someone with delirium tremens.’
Red laughed and I found my mouth twitching into a smile too.
‘I asked him who Bernadette was once,’ I said. ‘She was a dog apparently.’
Red’s loud guffaw echoed around the room. For a moment I wondered what it would be like if I brought him home for dinner, introduced him to Rosie. Couldwe be friends? It would be nice, I thought, having a new friend. A new old friend, someone who made me laugh. I wondered what his hand would feel like if I took it, if we went for a walk on the pier in Dun Laoghaire, where we always used to go. I wondered what life would have been like if only I hadn’t gone swimming that day. If only…
Before
Four in the morning and I had just hitched all theway from West Cork after leaving Nora and her boyfriend, Finty, at the Peace Camp on Mizen Head. Calling Red from a petrol station by the Red Cow Inn. And twenty minutes later, there he was. It was dark and cold and I had never been so tired. I had zigzagged my way up from the arse end of nowhere, thumbing lifts and waiting hours and hours. When I saw the old Nissan pulling into the forecourt, I burstinto tears and then Red’s arms around me, the smell of his old jacket, the light stubble on his face. Him kissing me, in the grey light of the dawn.
