I couldn’t meet him. Not now, not with all this shame. A powerful impulse almost had me marching away in the direction I’d just come from and, after a frantic, weighing-up session, only the fear that he might notice stopped me.

But of all the times to bump into him, I thought wildly. Of all the times to have to play the game of How Did Your Life Turn Out? Why couldn’t I have met him when I’d had a marriage I was proud of, when I’d been happy? Of course, I didn’t have to tell him how wrong everything had gone. But wouldn’t he guess, wasn’t it obvious…?

My hollow legs continued leading me down the hill, straight into his path.

For years I used to fantasize about meeting him again. Time after time I comforted myself with meticulous plans. I’d be thin, beautiful, trendily dressed, expertly lit. I’d be poised, confident, on top of my game. And he’d have lost his appeal. Somehow he’d have shrunk to about five five, his dark-blond hair would have fallen out and he’d have put on a ton of weight.

But from what I could see, he still had his hair and his height, and if he’d bulked out a bit, it had the unfortunate effect of suiting him. Meanwhile, look at me – the trackie bottoms, the air of failure, the way my face had gone a bit funny and immobile. It was nearly laughable. The only thing I had going for me were the floodlights in my hair – I’d been uncertain when the ‘dresser first suggested it, but now it was clear it was a godsend.

Closer I got. Closer. He’d no interest in me, not at all. It seemed as if I could escape with my raw, white face, my dad’s anorak, my air of recently separated bleakness. Then I was right up beside him, passing him by and still he wasn’t looking. And with a strange defiance I decided that if he wasn’t going to speak, then I would.

‘Shay?’

He looked, I have to say, gratifyingly shocked.

‘Maggie?’ He froze in the act of lifting something from the boot, then stood up. ‘Maggie Walsh?’

‘Garvan,’ I corrected shyly. ‘Maggie Garvan now, but yeah.’

‘That’s right,’ he agreed warmly. ‘I heard you got married. So, ah, how’s Garv?’

‘Fine.’ A little defensively.

All was still – and mildly uncomfortable. Then he rolled his eyes playfully to indicate shock. ‘Wooh, Maggie Walsh. Long time. So!’ Before he even asked it, I knew he was going to. ‘Any kids?’

‘No. You?’

‘Three. Little monkeys.’ He made a face.

‘I bet. Hahaha.’

‘You look fantastic!’ he declared. He was either blind or insane, but such was his enthusiasm that I tentatively began to half-believe him.

‘How’s your mum?’ As if he was genuinely interested. ‘How’s the cooking?’

‘Ah, she gave up on it.’

‘She’s some gal,’ he said admiringly. ‘And your dad? Still driven mad by the lot of you?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And what are you up to these days?’

‘Paralegal stuff.’

‘Yeah? Great.’

‘Yeah, great. You?’

‘Working for Dark Star Productions.’

‘I’ve heard of them.’ I’d read something about them in the paper, but couldn’t remember what exactly, so I said, ‘Yeah, great,’ a bit more.

And then he said, ‘Well, great to see you,’ and stuck out his hand. I looked dumbly at it – only for a second: he was expecting me to shake it. Like we were business colleagues. As I rubbed my palm against his, I remembered that he used to hold that hand over my mouth. To muffle the sounds I was making. When we were having sex.

How weird life is.

Already he was moving off. ‘Tell your mum and dad I was asking for them.’

‘And Garv?’ I couldn’t help it.

‘Sure. And Garv.’

As I walked away I was fine. I couldn’t believe it. I’d finally met him, and spoken to him, and I was fine. All those years wondering about it and I was fine. Fine. On a huge high, I danced towards home.

The minute I was inside the house I started to shake. So badly I couldn’t get my fingers to undo the zip of the anorak. Too late, I remembered that I shouldn’t have been nice to him. I should have been cold and unpleasant, after the way he’d treated me.

Mum appeared in the hall. ‘Did you meet anyone?’ she asked, her antipathy to me wrestling with her social curiosity.

‘No.’

‘No one at all?’

‘No.’

She’d loved Shay Delaney. He’d been a mother’s dream, already manly looking and with a golden-stubbled jaw while the other youths were still raw and unformed. This she put down to the fact that Shay’s father had left them, and Shay had to be the man of the house. The other lads in the gang – Micko, Macker, Toolser, even Garv – were sullen around adults; they found it impossible to maintain eye contact with anyone more than a year older than them. But Shay, the only one of his contemporaries to be called by his real name, as I recall, was perpetually good-humoured. Almost, at times, flirtatious. Claire, who was a couple of years older than him, used to say wryly, ‘I’m Shay Delaney and I always get what I want.’

But I was too busy for one of Mum’s avid interrogation sessions. (‘Had he a big car?’ ‘I believe his wife’s very glamorous?’ ‘Did the father ever leave the floozie and come home?’) I had to lie on my bed and tremble and think about Shay.

He’d been in the same year in school as Micko, Macker, Toolser and Garv, but he wasn’t fully part of their gang; his choice, not theirs, they’d have been delighted to be first best friends with him. He’d seemed to float between several factions and was welcomed by all. He was just one of those people who had – although I wouldn’t have known the word for it in those days – charisma. Claire had articulated it best by saying, ‘If Shay Delaney fell into a pit of shite he’d come out smelling of Chanel No. 5.’

Not only was he noticeably good-looking, but he had the decency not to rub people’s noses in it, so he got a rep as a nice person into the bargain. And of course, the tragedy of his father having walked out on the family generated a lot of sympathy for him. Because he looked older and had the confidence and charm to blag his way past doormen, he went places that we didn’t and inhabited different worlds to ours. But he chose to return to us, and he managed never to sound like he was boasting when he regaled us with stories of drinking crème de menthe in a nurses’ residential or going to some horsey girl’s twenty-first party in Meath. Of course, he’d always had lots of girlfriends; they’d usually left school and were either working or in college, which impressed the other lads no end.