Broken Harbour

house, not a T-shirt. Not an investment. A home. If you let other people decide what you think about something like that, if you just follow along because it’s trendy, then who are you? When the flock changes direction tomorrow, what, you just throw away everything you think and start over, because other people said so? Then what are you, underneath? You’re nothing. You’re no one.”

That fury, dense and cold as stone. I thought of the kitchen, smashed and bloody. “Is that what you said to Jenny?”

“I couldn’t say anything. Pat-he must’ve seen it on my face-Pat goes, ‘It’s true, man. Ask anyone in the country: ninety-nine percent of them would say we’re doing the right thing.’”

That raw scrape of a laugh again. “Stood there with my mouth open, staring. I couldn’t… Pat was never like that. Never. Not when we were sixteen. Yeah, sometimes he’d have a smoke or a spliff just because everyone at the party was, but underneath he knew who he was. He’d never have done anything full-on brain-dead, got into a car where the driver was pissed or anything like that, just because someone tried to pressure him into it. And now here he was, a fucking grown man, bleating on about ‘Everyone else is doing it!’”

I said, “So what did you say?”

Conor shook his head. “There wasn’t anything to say. I knew that already. The two of them… I didn’t have a clue who they were, any more. They weren’t people I wanted anything to do with. I tried anyway-fucking eejit. I went, ‘What the fuck’s happened to you two?’

“Pat says, ‘We grew up. That’s what happened. This is what being an adult is like. You play by the rules.’

“I go, ‘No it’s fucking well not. If you’re an adult, you think for your fucking self. Are you insane? Are you a zombie? What are you?’

“We were squared up like we were about to beat the shite out of each other. I thought we were; I thought he was going to punch me, any second. But then Jenny grabs my elbow again and pulls me around, and she yells, ‘You shut up! Just shut up! You’re going to ruin the whole thing. I can’t stand it, all this negativity-I don’t want that anywhere near the kids, I don’t want it anywhere near us, I don’t want it! It’s sick. If everyone starts thinking like you, the whole country’s going to go down the toilet and then we will be in trouble. Then will you be happy?’”

Conor ran a hand over his mouth again; I saw him bite down on the flesh of his palm. “She was crying. I started to say something, I don’t even know what, but Jenny slapped her hands over her ears and walked off, fast, down the road. Pat looked at me like I was dirt. He said, ‘Thanks, man. That was great.’ And he went after her.”

I said, “And what did you do?”

“I walked away. Walked around that shit-hole estate for a couple of hours, looking for something that’d make me ring Pat and say Sorry, man, I was so wrong, this place is gonna be paradise. All I found was more shit hole. In the end I rang this other mate of mine and got him to pick me up. Didn’t hear from them again. Didn’t try to get in touch, either.”

“Hmm,” I said. I leaned back in my chair, tapping my pen off my teeth, and considered that. “I suppose I’ve heard of friendships breaking up over some weird stuff, all right. But property values? Seriously?”

“I turned out to be right, didn’t I?”

“Were you pleased about that?”

“No. I’d have loved to be wrong.”

“Because you cared about Pat. Not to mention Jenny. You cared about Jenny.”

“About all four of them.”

“Especially Jenny. No, hang on: I’m not done. I’m a simple guy, Conor. Ask my partner here, he’ll tell you: I always go for the simplest solution, and it usually turns out to be the right one. So I’m thinking you could have fought with the Spains over their choice of house and the size of their mortgage and what it meant about their worldview and whatever else you just said-I lost track of some of it, you can remind me later. But it’s a lot simpler, given the background, that you guys fought because you were still in love with Jenny Spain.”

“That never even came up. We hadn’t talked about it since that one time, after Fiona broke up with me.”

I said, “So you were still in love with her.”

After a moment Conor said, quietly and painfully, “I’ve never known anyone like her.”

“Which is why your girlfriends never last. Right?”

“I don’t throw years of my life into something I don’t want. No matter who tells me I should. I saw Pat and Jenny; I know what the real thing looks like. Why would I go after anything else?”

I said, “But you’re trying to tell me that’s not what the argument was about.”

A flash of narrow, disgusted gray eyes. “It wasn’t. You think I’d’ve let them guess, either of them?”

“They did before.”

“Because I was younger. I was shite at hiding stuff, back then.”

I laughed out loud. “Just one big open book, yeah? Looks like Pat and Jenny weren’t the only ones who changed when they grew up.”

“I got more sense. I got more control. I didn’t turn into a different person.”

I said, “Does that mean you’re still in love with Jenny?”

“I haven’t talked to her in years.”

Which was a whole different question, but both of them could wait. “Maybe not. But you’ve seen plenty of her, from your little hideout. How did that start, while we’re at it?”

I expected Conor to dodge around that, but he answered fast and easily, like he welcomed it: any subject was better than his feelings for Jenny Spain. “By accident, almost. Things weren’t going great, the end of last year. Work had dried up. It was the start of the crash-no one was saying it, not then, you were a traitor to the country if you noticed it, but I knew. Freelancers like me, we were the first ones that felt it. I was pretty much skint. Had to move out of my apartment, get a shite bedsit-you’ve probably seen it. Haven’t you?”

Neither of us answered-in his corner Richie was staying still and melting into the background, leaving me a clear shot. The corner of Conor’s mouth twisted. “Hope you liked it. You can see why I don’t hang out there if I can help it.”

“But you didn’t sound like you were wild about Ocean View, either. How’d you end up hanging out there?”

He shrugged. “I had time on my hands, I was down… I kept thinking about Pat and Jenny. They were who I’d always talked to, if anything was bad. I missed them. I just… I wanted to see how they were getting on. I just started wondering.”

I said, “Well, that much I can get. But your average Joe, if he wants to reconnect with old mates, he doesn’t set up camp outside their back window. He picks up the phone. Sorry if it’s a stupid question, old son, but that didn’t occur to you?”

“Didn’t know if they’d want to talk to me. Didn’t even know if we still had enough in common that we’d get on. I couldn’t have taken finding out that we didn’t.” For a second he sounded like a teenager, fragile and raw. “Yeah, I could’ve rung Fiona and asked after them, but I didn’t know how much they’d told her, didn’t want to put her in the middle… One weekend I just figured I’d head out to Brianstown, see if I could get a look at them, go home. That was all.”

“And you got your look.”

“Yeah. Went up into that house, where you found me. I was only thinking I might catch them coming out into the back garden or something, but the windows in that kitchen… I could see everything. The four of them at the table. Jenny putting an elastic in Emma’s hair so it wouldn’t get in her lunch. Pat telling some story. Jack laughing, food all over his face.”

I asked, “How long did you stay up there?”

“Maybe an hour. It was nice; the nicest thing I’d seen in I don’t know how long.” The memory smoothed the tension out of Conor’s voice, gentled it. “Peaceful. I went home peaceful.”

“So you came back for another fix.”

“Yeah. A couple of weeks later. Emma had her dolls out in the garden, making them take turns to do some dance, showing them how. Jenny was hanging out her washing. Jack was being an airplane.”