“You’re on,” I said. We shook on it. His hand was dry and strong and callused, and the grip flicked a spark of static between us. Neither of us flinched.

Carmel said, “D’you know something, Francis, we said we wouldn’t ask you, but I can’t help it-Jackie, would you ever stop that, don’t be pinching me!”

Jackie had got her bladder back under control and was giving Carmel the evil stare of doom. Carmel said, with dignity, “If he doesn’t want to talk about it, he can tell me himself, so he can. Francis, why did you never come back before this?”

I said, “I was too scared that Ma would get the wooden spoon and beat the living shite out of me. Do you blame me?”

Shay snorted. Carmel said, “Ah, seriously, but, Francis. Why?”

She and Kevin and even Jackie-who had asked this question a bunch of times and never got an answer-were gazing at me, tipsy and perplexed and even a little hurt. Shay was picking a fleck of something out of his pint.

I said, “Let me ask yous something. What would you die for?”

“Jaysus,” Kevin said. “You’re a barrel of laughs, aren’t you?”

“Ah, leave him,” Jackie said. “The day that’s in it.”

I said, “Da once told me he’d die for Ireland. Would you do that?”

Kevin rolled his eyes. “Da’s stuck in the seventies. No one thinks like that any more.”

“Try it for a second. Just for the crack. Would you?”

He gave me a bemused look. “Like why?”

“Say England invaded all over again.”

“They couldn’t be arsed.”

“If, Kev. Stay with me here.”

“I dunno. I never thought about it.”

“That,” Shay said, not too aggressively, aiming his pint at Kevin, “that right there, that’s what has this country ruined.”

“Me? What’d I do?”

“You and the rest like you. Your whole bloody generation. What do you care about, only Rolexes and Hugo Boss? What else do you think about, even? Francis is right, for once in his life. You’d want to get yourself something you’d die for, pal.”

“For fuck’s sake,” Kevin said. “What would you die for? Guinness? A good ride?”

Shay shrugged. “Family.”

“What are you on about?” Jackie demanded. “You hate Ma and Da’s guts.”

All five of us burst out laughing; Carmel had to tip her head back and knuckle tears out of her eyes. “I do,” Shay acknowledged, “yeah. But that’s not the point.”

“Would you die for Ireland, yeah?” Kevin asked me. He still sounded a little miffed.

“I would in me hole,” I said, which set everyone off again. “I was posted in Mayo for a while. Have yous ever been to Mayo, have yous? It’s boggers, sheep and scenery. I’m not dying for that.”

“What, then?”

“Like my man Shay says,” I told Kev, waving my glass at Shay, “that’s not the point. The point is that I know.”

“I’d die for the kids,” Carmel said. “God forbid.”

Jackie said, “I’d say I’d die for Gav. Only if he really needed it, mind. Is this not terrible morbid, Francis? Would you not rather talk about something else?”

I said, “Back in the day, I would’ve died for Rosie Daly. That’s what I’m trying to tell yous.”

There was a silence. Then Shay raised his glass. “Here’s to everything we’d die for,” he said. “Cheers.”

We clinked our glasses, took deep drinks and relaxed back into our seats. I knew this might well be because I was about nine tenths hammered, but I was fucking delighted that they had come in, even Shay. More than that: I was grateful. They might be a spectacularly messed-up bunch and what they felt about me was anyone’s guess, but the four of them had dropped whatever they could have been doing this evening, put down their lives at a moment’s notice and come in here to walk me through this night. We fit together like pieces of a jigsaw, and that felt like a warm gold glow wrapped all around me; like I had stumbled, by some perfect accident, into the right place. I was just sober enough not to try and put this into words.

Carmel leaned in to me and said, almost shyly, “When Donna was a baba, there was something went wrong with her kidneys; they thought she might need a transplant. I told them straight off, not a bother on me, they could take the both of mine. I didn’t think twice. She was grand in the end, sure, and they’d only have needed the one anyway, but I never forgot that. D’you know what I mean?”

“Yep,” I said, smiling at her. “I do.”

Jackie said, “Ah, she’s lovely, Donna is. She’s a wee dote; always laughing. You’ll have to meet her now, Francis.”

Carmel told me, “I see you in Darren. D’you know that? I always did, from when he was a little young fella.”

“God help him,” Jackie and I said, together.

“Ah, now; in a good way. Going to college, like. He didn’t get that off me or Trevor, we’d have been happy enough to see him go into the plumbing with his daddy. No, Darren came up with that all by himself, never said a word to us: just got all the course forms, decided what one he wanted, and worked like mad to get himself into the right Leaving Cert classes. Went after it bullheaded, all on his own. Like yourself. I always used to wish I was like that.”

For a second there, I thought I saw a wave of sadness rise up across her face. “I remember you doing just fine when you wanted something,” I said. “How about Trevor?”

The sadness vanished, and I got a quick mischievous snippet of giggle that made her look like a girl again. “I did, didn’t I? That dance, the first time I saw him: I took one look and I said to Louise Lacey, I said, ‘That one’s mine.’ He was wearing them flares that were all the rage-”

Jackie started to laugh.

“Don’t be making fun, you,” Carmel told her. “Your Gavin does be always in them raggedy old jeans; I like a fella that makes a bit of an effort. Trevor had a lovely little arse on him in the flares, so he did. And he smelled only gorgeous. What are yous two laughing at?”

“You brazen hussy, you,” I said.

Carmel took a prim sip of her Babycham. “I was not. Things were different back then. If you were mad about a fella, you’d sooner die than let him know. You had to make him do the chasing.”

Jackie said, “Jaysus, Pride and bleeding Prejudice. I asked Gavin out, so I did.”

“I’m telling yous, it worked; better than all this rubbish nowadays, girls going to the clubs with no knickers on them. I got my fella, didn’t I? Engaged on my twenty-first. Were you still here for that, Francis?”

“Just,” I said. “I left about three weeks after.” I remembered the engagement party: the two families squeezed into our front room, the mammies eyeing each other up like a pair of overweight pit bulls, Shay doing his big-brother act and shooting Trevor the filthies, Trevor all Adam’s apple and terrified bug-eyes, Carmel flushed and triumphant and squeezed into a pink pleated horror that made her look like an inside-out fish. Back then I was even more of an arrogant prick; I sat on the windowsill next to Trevor’s piggy little brother, ignoring him and congratulating myself fervently on the fact that I was getting the hell out of Dodge and would never have an engagement party involving egg sandwiches. Careful what you wish for. Looking at the four of them around the pub table, I felt like I had missed something in that night; like an engagement party might have been, at least in the long run, something worth having.

“I wore my pink,” Carmel said, with satisfaction. “Everyone said I looked only smashing.”

“You did, all right,” I said, winking at her. “If only you weren’t my sister, I’d have fancied you myself.”

She and Jackie squealed-“Yeuch, stop!”-but I wasn’t paying attention any more. Down at their end of the table, Shay and Kevin had been having a chat of their own, and the defensive note in Kevin’s voice had ratcheted up enough to make me tune in. “It’s a job. What’s wrong with it?”

“A job where you work your guts out licking yuppie arse, yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir, and all for the good of some fat corporation that’ll throw you to the wolves as soon as the going gets tough. You make thousands a week for them, and what do you get out of it?”