Great. Francesca. That’s all Tom needs. Both girls.

“Change the chord!” Stani calls out again.

“To a G,” Tom tells him.

“To a G!”

The guitar playing stops.

“What if I promise?” Tom persists.

Stani’s just staring at him. All pale-blue bloodshot eyes squinting with distrust. But then Tom gets sick of the groveling and walks toward the door.

“On your father’s honor?” Stani asks as Tom reaches the door.

“No.” Tom’s not wanting to bring his father into this . . . into anything in his life. “On my uncle’s. On Joe’s. You knew him?”

Stani nods with a sigh. “Yeah, I knew Joe.”

The guitar playing begins again. It’s slow and she’s thinking too hard. He can imagine the look on Francesca’s face while she concentrates on the chords. She picks a Waifs song — a good one for learning because it’s just one or two chords and it’s slow.

“I can hazard a guess, but I’ll never know

Why you put these walls up, I can’t get through

It’s as though you want to be lonely and blue.”

Francesca Spinelli’s voice can do anything, and singing alongside her always made Tom sound better than he was. Justine was the same. One of those musical geniuses. Except she chose the accordion, or as she’d say, it chose her, and it’s not exactly the conservatorium’s choice musical instrument. When they were in Year Twelve, the three of them formed a band and called themselves The Fey. Tom was purely into writing their own material. Originals or nothing. Francesca didn’t mind dabbling with a cover once or twice. Justine was neutral. They ended up with a mixed bag that they always believed made them unique, and for the first year of uni, they played gigs around each other’s campuses, constantly hiring and firing drummers until they decided they’d stick to just the three of them. They were different from the others in their group. Tom and Francesca, especially, had a bit of a lazy streak, courtesy of natural ability. They just liked playing music with absolutely no ambition of going anywhere with it and it was Justine who took care of business and was in charge. By the end of their first year of uni, Siobhan Sullivan was working three jobs, saving to go to London, and Jimmy Hailler was nursing his sick grandfather. Tara Finke was stuck with three music fanatics who dragged her to every gig they had.

Just listening to Francesca’s voice makes Tom think of those nights he’d camp out at her place and they’d be practicing in her bedroom and Tara would fall asleep on the bed still holding her study notes.

“We’re going to be famous one day and you’ll tell people we used to put you to sleep,” he teased at the time when the looks between them changed into something intense. They had enjoyed some kind of clumsy antagonistic attraction since they had first met in Year Eleven. Tara Finke dealt with it by ignoring him. Tom slept with other girls. But it had always been there, scrutinized by Francesca and Justine. The same two staring at him now from the back-room door.

“Seems like Tom here will be washing plates,” Stani tells the girls. “In the kitchen with Ned.”

Still nothing from the two except a bit of irritated surprise on their faces.

Justine is the first to break the silence.

“If his friends come in, I’m calling the police,” she tells her uncle.

“And he gets the lockup shift,” Francesca says.

They speak like they’re in charge, and judging from Stani’s shrug, maybe they are.

He remembers the times they’d walk toward him in the playground with that same look on their faces, but double in number with Siobhan and Tara. “It’s the four horsewomen of the apocalypse,” Jimmy Hailler would say. “They’re going to make us do something we don’t want to do.”

“We’re not going to give in,” Tom would say.

But they did. Always. “Think of the alternatives,” Jimmy said. “They love us. Imagine if they hated us.”

There’s no need for imagining here.

Francesca walks away, taking out her phone and texting. He knows who it’s to and what she’s saying. The dickhead of our lives is back.

He gives himself four weeks to pay off the debt and never walk into this place again.

To: mackee_joe@yahoo.co.uk

From: georgiefinch@hotmail.com

Date: 16 July 2007

I practice my response, Joe. Because it’s what everyone wants to ask. I can see it in their eyes. How did I let this thing with Sam happen? And this is how I try to respond: That he was hiding in wait, one street away, hovering on the perimeters of my world, still hanging out with Dom and the others. I’d know. Because I’d smell him the moment I’d walk into anyone’s house. I was like a wolf — able to follow his scent through this whole city. It’s what happens when you’ve lived with someone for seven years. But I didn’t want anyone to take sides, remember? You did. You never spoke to him again, Joe, but it wasn’t the way I wanted things. I just wanted everyone to keep their end of the bargain and never ever expect Sam and me to be in the same room or to discuss him or his child in front of me. The Jews tear their clothing when someone in their life dies. I was Jewish the year Sam’s child was born. Tearing everything inside of me that wasn’t already torn.

But then you got on that train, Joe. And it was Sam who spoke to Foreign Affairs, contacting every person he knew in London to try to work out what they knew in those first couple of days. It was Sam who booked my flight because we all felt hopeless waiting for you to come home to us, and it was Sam who traveled with me. In London it was Sam who went to every hospital, hanging up photographs of you in waiting rooms and outside Tube stations. Sam who told me and your beautiful Ana Vanquez that there was no body to take home. No evidence of you except your cash card being used that morning to buy a weekly ticket at the Tube station. It was Sam who had to listen to the words over and over again, “I can’t go home without my brother’s body. Don’t ask me to do that to my mother.”

And then he was back in my bed, Joe. I don’t know how. I didn’t ask him. He didn’t ask to come back. It’s as though I woke up one morning and Sam was lying there beside me. And he stayed and I couldn’t understand why, because I hated everyone around me. Every time anyone opened their mouth I wanted to tell them to shut up because their words were useless. But Sam stayed, and here we are, Joe. Sam and I.

Almost living together, and I’m able to forget.

Except for the Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, when he has his son.

Tom works at the Union from five o’clock onward because it’s the only time Stani serves food. The menu is limited to sausages and mash, T-bone, and salad. Stani doesn’t cater to vegetarians. “Bloody bastards,” he mutters when people complain. “Cook in your own homes.”

The cook’s name is Ned and he’s a lanky guy Tom’s age, with eyes that swing all over the place nervously, and a height that makes him stoop with awkwardness. He’s slightly too cool-looking to be considered goofy, but it’s a very fine line that he walks.

Tom’s ex-flatmates used to do impersonations of the way Ned would say, “Hi, Sarah,” in a puppy-dog fashion, tongue hanging out, and then they’d do an exaggerated circular motion to the other side of the room and say, “Hi, Zac.” They didn’t know which way he swung sexually, but then again, Zac didn’t know himself, so it could have been him projecting.

Once or twice Tom attempts to make conversation, but Ned the Cook seems to have the same problem as Mohsin the Ignorer. With Francesca, Ned the Cook is different. Ned the Introvert becomes Ned the Wit. On Tom’s third night working, Ned spends the whole time speaking Latin to Francesca. It was one of the useless subjects she took as part of her history degree, and the two banter and giggle using words ending with cus, tis, and ergo that make Tom want to commit a felony with a scourer sponge. He makes it clear what he thinks through small snorts of disbelief.