‘You’ve never been to me,’ Lisa said, which wasn’t to say that she hadn’t noticed his tantrums.

‘I don’t mean to be,’ he said with vague wistfulness. ‘It just… sort of… happens, and I’m always sorry afterwards.’

‘So your bark is worse than your bite?’

He swung around. ‘Done!’ he said, putting down his spanner. Then he added softly, ‘Not always. Sometimes my bite is very bad.’

Before she could take him up on that provocative statement, he was clattering spanners and screwdrivers back into his toolbox. ‘It’s on a twenty-four-hour clock, should be no bother to set, hot water any time you like. See you tomorrow and sorry for arriving unannounced.’

‘No proble–’

Suddenly he was gone, the house seemed too empty, and Lisa was alone – very alone – with her thoughts.

Oliver had cared about clothes, about parties, about art and music and clubs and knowing the right people. Jack was a badly dressed closet-socialist who sailed on a surfboard and who had no social life to speak of. But he was also big and sexy and dangerous and smelt nice, and hey, you can’t have everything.

24

You’re a great girl, Ashling, you’re a great girl, Ashling. Dylan’s farewell to Ashling carouselled in her head, as she walked home from the Shelbourne. And only stopped when she popped into Café Moka for something to eat.

When she finally reached home, Boo was sitting outside.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Ashling asked. ‘I haven’t seen you in a couple of days.’

He threw his look heavenwards. ‘Women!’ he exclaimed, good-naturedly. ‘Always trying to keep tabs on you.’ His eyes were bright in his unshaven face. ‘I felt like a change of scene.’ He waved a grubby hand in a playfully louche gesture. ‘A beautiful shop doorway in Henry Street beckoned, so I laid my hat there for a couple of nights.’

‘So you sleep around,’ Ashling said. ‘Typical man.’

‘It meant nothing,’ Boo said earnestly. ‘It was just a physical thing.’

‘Last night I had books for you.’ Ashling was annoyed at being caught, once more, on the hop.

Until she remembered that she had a review copy of a Patricia Cornwell in her bag. No one at the office had wanted it so Ashling had taken it for Joy.

‘Would you be into this?’ Awkwardly she tugged it from her bag. Boo’s eyes blazed with so much interest that she felt slightly sick. She had so much, he had nothing except an orange blanket.

‘Deadly,’ he breathed. ‘I’ll mind it, make sure nothing happens to it.’

‘You can keep it.’

‘How come?’

‘I got it, er, free. At work.’

‘Cool job,’ he congratulated. ‘Thanks, Ashling, I appreciate this.’

‘It’s nothing,’ she said, stiffly. Upset by the unfairness of the world, angry with herself for having so much power, guilty because she did so little.

As she stuck her key in the door, he called, ‘What did you think of Marcus Valentine?’

‘I don’t know.’ For a moment she was about to launch into a long explanation of how she hadn’t fancied him, then she’d seen him on the stage and couldn’t help changing her mind, how she was dying for him to ring her and hoped that there might be a message waiting for her and… hold on a minute.

‘Funny,’ she smiled weakly at Boo. ‘He was really funny.’

Funny is fecking well right. Saying he’d ring, then not bothering his arse. She ran up the stairs in her haste to see if there was a message.

At the sight of the red light flashing, her head went giddy. She hit ‘play’, and as the tape rewound to the start, she did a quick lap where she rubbed the lucky Buddha, touched her lucky pebble, stroked her lucky crystal and pulled on her lucky red bobble hat. ‘Please, Benign Force in the Universe that I choose to call God,’ she prayed, ‘let him have rung.’

There was obviously some confusion in the space-time continuum, because her prayers were answered. But they were the wrong prayers. Out-of-date prayers – the message was from Phelim. So many times in the past Ashling had prayed for Phelim to ring her, and now that he had, it was too late.

‘G’day, Ashling,’ he crackled from Sydney. ‘How’re you going?’ He sounded sunny and Australian, then he lapsed back into a Dublin accent. ‘Listen, I’m after forgetting to buy my ma a birthday present and it’s more than my life’s worth. Would you get her an ornament or something, you know better than me what she likes, and I’ll see you right. Thanks, you’re a gem.’

‘Bloody eejit,’ she muttered, pulling off her lucky red bobble hat. If she hadn’t sorted him out with tickets, visas, passports and Australian dollars, Phelim would still be trying to figure out how to leave the country. She’d almost had to physically put him on the plane with a note around his neck. Then she noted her reactions – a complete absence of nausea, nostalgia or yearning. Contact with Phelim usually upset her, but it looked like she’d started to believe her own publicity. She really was over him.

She picked up the phone and rang Ted. ‘If only Civil Servant-Boy could be here,’ she said, by way of greeting.

‘I’m on my way.’

‘Get Joy as well.’

Moments later Ashling greeted Ted and Joy by saying, ‘I’m having man trouble.’

‘Me too,’ Joy said, almost boastfully.

‘Half-man-half-badger?’

‘Half-prick-half-badger,’ Joy corrected. ‘Giving me the run-around. But what man, Ashling, is giving you trouble? Mr Sexy Delicious at work? I think I predicted this, didn’t I?’

‘Who? Oh, Jack Devine?’ The memory of the two hundred cigarettes made her uncomfortable, so she moved swiftly along to the ‘act your age, not the speed limit’ accusation, and once again knew where she stood. ‘That bastard?’

Joy gave Ted a smug, I-told-you-so smile. ‘Feelings are running high,’ she observed indulgently.

‘It’s not Jack Devine,’ Ashling insisted. ‘It’s that stand-up comedian, Marcus Valentine.’

‘What,’ Joy asked testily, ‘are you on about?’

So Ashling told the whole story, about meeting Marcus at the party on the quays, the Bellez-moi note –