‘But if he does, Ronan will never get the house,’ Harlie said.
‘I just meant …’ Trassa blustered. ‘You know what I meant.’
‘Fuck’s sake!’ Harlie surprised us all. ‘Am I the only one freaking out that a loan shark is going to hurt your son if he doesn’t pay him twenty thousand euro by Friday?’
‘He’s not a loan shark!’
‘He’s definitely a loan shark,’ Chalkie said.
‘You’re the man who stole the bail money your community raised!’ Trassa flung at Chalkie. ‘And used it to buy heroin for yourself! You’ve no right to criticize me! Because of you an innocent man spent seven months on remand waiting for a trial.’
‘At least I won’t be responsible for my son getting his fingers sawn off!’
‘Who said anything about saws?’ Trassa was scandalized. ‘Or fingers. Collie Byrne’s not that sort! A few slaps is as bad as it gets.’
‘Chalkie’s using his imagination,’ Giles said. ‘And he’s on the money.
‘No pun intended.’ Giles smiled at Chalkie – who returned the smile. Then both of them realized what they were doing and identical looks of horror appeared on their faces.
Right, that was enough of Trassa for the moment. She’d been set upon the right path; things were now just a matter of time.
25
‘It’s in the Dublin mountains,’ Kate said. ‘And it’s big. Rooms for everything. Laundry room. Cinema room. They have a boiling-water tap.’
‘Ooooh.’ We laughed. We both lusted after those taps.
That evening, Kate and I were both home. She’d spent the previous night with Devin and, at the best of times, Other People’s Houses exerted a huge draw on me but my obsession was worse than usual because of Luke.
Maybe I shouldn’t have been nosy-poking around but maybe it was impossible not to? Luke was on my mind the whole time, humming away like background noise. Memories kept popping into my head – at work, in traffic, midway through a conversation with Mum.
But it was hardly a surprise. We’d broken up in a way that had left me hanging, with a million unanswered questions. Now, all of a sudden, Luke was answering my calls again. If I tried talking to him about what had gone wrong, I suspected he wouldn’t make a run for it.
Not just yet though. Since the funeral, my skin had felt like it was on inside out. I needed to wait until I was less raw.
‘Devin has his own space away from the main house where his band practises,’ Kate said. ‘It’s set up with all the equipment.’
‘How many bedrooms in the house?’
She thought about it. ‘Devin’s room, his mum and dad, his sister, his kid brother, the room Luke and Kallie are in … five, anyway. A gazillion bathrooms.’
‘And his parents are cool with you, um … staying over?’
‘Uh-uh,’ she said. ‘They’re really nice. Well, Justin, you know him. And his mum – Sarina? – she’s lovely too.’
Don’tAskDon’tAskDon’tAsk. ‘… Have you seen’ – it was difficult to say her name – ‘Kallie again?’
‘This morning.’
I waited.
‘Rach, don’t be mad, but I feel sorry for her. She knows nobody here except Luke and he’s gone all day, over with his dad. Devin’s house is off the bus route and she can’t drive a stick shift – is that a car with gears?’
‘It is.’ God, this was hard. But I needed to nip something in the bud. ‘Of course I’m not mad. The stuff with me and Luke has nothing to do with …’ It was easier to say it a second time. ‘Kallie.’
‘Oh, okay, good.’ She smiled.
I had to go to bed – this had turned into a very rough week and I wanted to check out for a while.
But instead, I ended up thinking about Luke.
Long, long ago, back in the days before I’d been to rehab, he and I had had lots of amazing sex. It was the part of us that always worked. The urgency with which he’d wanted me was the hottest thing ever and even when I was embarrassed by his clothes or his friends （seriously, I was awful） I found him head-spinningly sexy.
But the uncomfortable truth was that when we’d start tearing the clothes off each other, I’d often be slightly out of it – though never a lot. Any time it was obvious, Luke refused to touch me. It confused him – or it made him angry.
He couldn’t understand why I overdid it, and the thing was, neither could I.