Niall glanced to his right and saw that Carl was not laughing and so he stopped laughing too. He wanted to tell Carl about the rat but these days when Niall spoke to Carl he barely responded. Niall felt that if he could just say the right thing Carl would like him again and so Niall got in trouble a lot for talking. Mrs Mallon had seated them beside each other because they were friends, telling them that if they started messing, they’d be moved. Niall was hoping now that they might be moved because something had happened over the summer and Carl was off with him.

Niall knew that Mrs Crowley had left Mr Crowley and gone to live with a man in Dublin. He’d overheard his parents talking about it. And when he’d gone to Carl’s house to play over the summer, things were different. Carl only wanted to stay inside and play computer games. When Mrs Crowley had been there, she used to make them go outside or, if it was raining, she would set up games for them. She had once placed two easels beneath the covered porch at the back of their house, put newspaper over the concrete floor, and given them smocks to wear so they could cover each other in paint if they wanted to. Colette was always coming up with nice things for them to do. Part of the reason Niall had liked going to Carl’s house was because of Colette. She was usually upstairs in her study, working, which meant she was writing poems, and when she was doing that, she couldn’t be disturbed. But sometimes she would come out of the room to get something, and she always smiled at Niall and asked him how school was, and once Niall had read her one of his poems that he’d won a prize for. She sat down to listen to him and Niall could tell by the way she looked at him that she was really paying attention. And when he’d finished, she smiled and stood up and placed her hand on top of his head. She’d walked to the shelf, taken down a book of poems, and said, ‘That’s for you, love – to bring home with you.’ But Carl had looked at him funny when this had happened.

It had felt important to Niall for Carl to know that his mammy and daddy fought too. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about his parents’ fight – his father chasing his mother down the hallway, the shout he’d let out when she elbowed him in the ribs. The next day his father had been shaving with the bathroom door open, and Niall saw on the right side of his body a deep purple bruise, like one of the inkblot paintings they did at school.

And so Niall had told Carl about the fight one break time when the weather was bad and they weren’t allowed to go outside. When Niall finished the story Carl said nothing for a while, just carried on eating his ham sandwich, and after he’d finished chewing all he said was, ‘We went to see The Mask in Letterkenny cinema on Friday night.’

Mrs Mallon whacked the map with the wooden pointer.

‘Lough Neagh,’ they all shouted, and Niall noticed that Carl was roaring the answers louder than anyone else.

Niall nudged him. ‘Hey,’ he whispered, ‘guess what happened this morning?’

But Carl just kept his arms folded on the desk and stared ahead of him.

‘Hey,’ Niall said, and nudged him again, but this time Carl drew his elbow away.

‘Niall Keaveney,’ Mrs Mallon shouted. ‘Are we going to have a repeat of yesterday’s performance?’

At lunchtime he played football with the other boys in his class. He wasn’t much good so he ran around a lot but tried to stay as far away from the ball as possible. When the bell rang, they all lined up at the main door to the school and waited for Mrs Mallon to call them in. Carl was standing with his back to Niall. He was talking to Luke Hanley, a boy he’d started hanging around with recently who sometimes went to his house after school. Niall had heard them talking about the computer games they played and now he could hear them discussing their plans for the weekend. Niall decided then to tell Carl about the rat and he tapped him on the shoulder but Carl didn’t turn around – he just kept on talking to Luke.

‘Hey, Carl,’ Niall said, trying to sound relaxed, but Carl did not respond. He prodded the back of Carl’s shoe with his foot, and still nothing. Then he poked him on the shoulder.

‘Hey,’ Carl said, turning around. ‘Don’t punch me.’ He pushed Niall.

Niall tried to smile, to make it seem like there had been some misunderstanding, but it felt like the more he tried, the more he might start to cry.

‘What kind of a punch was that anyway?’ Carl said. ‘You fight like your mammy. You wee poof.’

Niall pushed Carl hard. ‘Aye, well, at least my mammy’s at home and didn’t go off with some man up in Dublin.’

And then he felt the full weight of Carl’s body rush against him and they were tangled up in each other and he wrapped his arms around Carl’s neck and wrenched at his head. And everyone in the lines surrounded them and shouted ‘fight, fight, fight’. They were both trying to lift their knees and jab them into the other’s side but they were holding on too tightly and toppled into a pile on the wet ground.

‘Get up out of that,’ came the voice of Mrs Mallon, and he was hauled off the ground by the hood of his anorak. The crowd backed away.

He watched Carl stumble to his feet. His sallow skin was blotchy and tears streaked his cheeks.

‘What did you do that for?’ Carl asked.

Tiny black stones stuck to Carl’s jawline where Niall had pressed his face to the ground.

Chapter 4

The blinds were drawn in the middle of the day, which Brian thought odd. He rang the bell and tried the handle of the front door but it was locked. He looked over to where her little red Nissan was parked in its usual spot in front of the house and wondered if she’d gone for a walk. But he hadn’t anticipated this, how disappointed he’d feel at the prospect of not seeing her. Ever since he’d watched her run out of the chapel on Sunday he’d meant to call and visit but it had taken him a few days to get around to it. He decided to drive back to his house and phone her, and if there were no response, he’d call James at his office. He remembered then that the back door was usually left on the latch, but just as he stepped away the lock rattled and the door opened a few inches.

‘Is it yourself?’ Izzy said in a flat tone, peering out at him. Such a short distance between them and yet her voice sounded like it was coming from somewhere very far away. Before he could say anything, she’d turned and was walking down the hall. She closed the door of the sitting room and looked back at him. ‘Come on into the kitchen,’ she said.

‘I was just bringing back a few of your books,’ he said, following her. ‘But I left them in the car. I’ll try and remember to give them to you when I’m leaving.’

‘Sure, don’t worry – give them to me any time.’

She was filling the kettle at the sink, her back to him. How slight she looked, her shoulders drawn so tightly together. He imagined laying his hands there, how they would cover the entire span of her back. She had her hair tied in a neat little ponytail, the mousy-brown wisps at her nape exposed. The cheap elastic tie was like something a child would use. She usually wore her straw-coloured hair held back by an Alice band, and tucked behind her ears.

‘How did you get on with them?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘The books.’

‘Oh, not so bad. I enjoyed the Roddy Doyle. It was sad – so, so desperately sad, but I liked it. It’s the child’s perspective, isn’t it? It just makes you feel it more. But I couldn’t get on with the Doris Lessing – the darkness, so relentless.’

‘Oh God, Roddy Doyle is dark too in his way.’

‘Yes, but at least there’s some levity, some humour. And there’s a familiarity to it too, I suppose.’

She placed a teapot on the table between them.

‘But anyway, listen to me going on. You’d swear I knew what I was talking about,’ he said.

She sat down, dropping onto the seat like she could not have supported the weight of her body for a second longer.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

She looked off into the corner of the room and for a moment he thought she had not heard him.

‘You saw?’ she said.

‘I just saw you leave the church.’

‘Oh, I’m embarrassed,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘I thought I was going to faint and so I extricated myself before I toppled over on someone. I was grand as soon as I got a bit of fresh air. It’s just something that comes over me from time to time. I’ll survive.’

Her face was so slack and expressionless. He’d hardly been in the parish six months and several times already he’d witnessed these depressions she fell into, but never had he seen her quite so at a distance from herself. She reached for her cigarettes and drew one from the packet, and he took his lighter from the inside pocket of his blazer and lit it for her.

‘Is James around?’ he asked. It always had something to do with James.

‘Dublin,’ she said, blowing out a train of smoke as though she were deflated by the very word.

She placed her cigarette on the lip of the ashtray and poured the tea.

‘I have four christenings and a wedding this weekend,’ he said. ‘Imagine.’

‘God love them,’ Izzy said, taking up her cigarette. She took a drag and rested her chin on the heel of her hand, her eyes cast down at the table. But then some hint of divilment seemed to stir in her. She smiled, looking up at him. ‘And you had that funeral to go to down the country.’

He laughed, flicked the ash of his cigarette. ‘You have me there.’

‘Imagine having the gall to get up in front of your flock and tell them a barefaced lie like that.’

‘Ah now, settle down, it was only a kind of a lie. I was occupied with church business, as it happens. I’m working on something, or working up to it rather, but it’s not fit for human consumption yet. We’ve been given a directive – from on high.’