Seven: The smell of freshly cut grass.

Eight: Scarface and a pint.

Nine: Jackie’s Army in Italia ’90.

Ten: Finding money in my pocket.

These are ten things that make me happy, oooh…

He stops playing and the crowd responds with:

And none of them are you.

‘SARAH!’ Donal yells, which sends everyone into hysterics.

Eleven: A favourite song on repeat.

Twelve: Catching the morning bus.

Thirteen: Popping bubble-wrap.

Fourteen: Mam’s apple tart. [This gets a cheer.]

Fifteen: Matching socks.

These are fifteen things that make me happy, oooh…

AND NONE OF THEM ARE YOU.

Sixteen: Packie Bonner’s save against Romania. [More cheers.]

Seventeen: Breakfast in bed.

Eighteen: A shower, shit and a shave.

Nineteen: The first day of the holidays.

Twenty…

He strums the guitar speedily, drumming up the anticipation, so that everyone joins in on the final line:

… And kissing your best friend!

The lyrics had always been ‘fucking’ your best friend, which is what he had done to help himself at the time, but it didn’t work of course, and he kept it clean for his parents’ sake.

The crowd erupt with joy and as he leaves the stage, Cormac, his eldest brother, gets up to say a piece from Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel.

As Solomon makes his way through the crowd, stopping to chat to people he hasn’t seen in months, he reaches his place to find Laura gone. He searches around and catches Donal’s eye. He points at the door towards the kitchen. Solomon can’t get into the kitchen quick enough.

The kitchen holds party stragglers picking at the food during Cormac’s performance. Cormac possesses that ability to clear the room, not because he’s not good – he’s great, no one delivers it better – but because he lacks timing. When everybody is about to lift the ceiling off, he does his piece, dark and quiet and sad, which is in direct contradiction to what everybody wants. He kills the atmosphere, lets the energy dip. He does the same in conversation, brings up something sombre when they’re all laughing.

His sister Cara has also escaped their brother’s moment. She notices Solomon looking around, senses his mood.

‘Out there’ – she points out the window – ‘gone to show her the cuckoos, our cuckoo-fucking-expert.’ She does Solomon the decency of not even laughing at that. Solomon controls himself, his pace, tries to control his heart rate as he makes his way through the growing crowd to the door that leads to the garden. Once at the door, he stalls, his hand on the handle.

And what is so wrong with Laura being outside with Rory? Apart from it driving Solomon insane, she’s a twenty-six-year-old woman who can do what she likes. What’s he going to do, break them up? Declare that they can’t be together? He knows his brother well, knows exactly what he wants from Laura, what any man would want from any young beautiful woman they have a private moment with, but his brother is not a sexual predator. He won’t be on top of Laura, pinning her down to the ground; she doesn’t need rescuing.

Or maybe Laura knows exactly what Rory wants, maybe she wants it too. Ten years alone in a cottage without intimacy, would she want sex? Wouldn’t that be natural? Solomon knows that he would. But does he owe it to Laura to protect her? It’s not his job to mind her, or is it? Perhaps that’s a job that he’s given himself, placing himself in a position of importance for his own ego. An argument that is reminiscent of childish brotherly fights: I found her first. She’s mine! But Laura did choose him, he is the one she wanted to stay with, though not necessarily be wrapped in cotton wool by him. He’s not exactly her knight in shining armour either, thinking some of the things he’s been thinking. With a girlfriend. A girlfriend he just accused of trying to hook up with her ex. He was projecting. Bo would see right through him, if she hadn’t already. Most girlfriends would never allow their boyfriends to go away on a trip with another woman, especially to a family occasion, especially a young beautiful single woman. Was she testing him, or did she have ridiculously high reserves of trust and loyalty? Or did she want him to do what he so wanted to do? Was she egging him on, daring him to end it? Do the thing that she can’t do. Because if he didn’t, would they ever break up? Were they going to be together for ever because neither of them had the balls to break up, because there wasn’t a good enough reason to break up?

Things were never bad between him and Bo, but he didn’t exactly know where they were headed. They were working together, tied together through that, living together more as a result of an accident than from anything deliberate or romantic. And who does he think he is, imagining he is even entitled to a chance with Laura, as if that’s something that is there for his taking. Frustrated with himself for sitting on his high horse, he knows he’s entirely to blame and has been trying to justify whatever occurred to him in the forest the day he met Laura.

‘Jesus,’ Cara interrupts his thoughts. ‘If you don’t go, I will.’ Cara hands him her bottle of beer, moves him aside and goes outside to the garden. The chill hits Solomon, which goes straight to his brain, a wake-up call. He downs the remainder of her bottle, follows Cara into the dark night and the security beam comes to life, illuminating the garden. There’s no sign of Rory and Laura.

There are three places to go. Through an archway into the labyrinth; manicured hedging that they used to get up to mischief in, the beach.

‘He wouldn’t bring her in there,’ Cara says. She looks across the road to the beach, then back to the garden. By now Solomon’s heart is racing.

‘Up here,’ Cara says, and they leave the manicured garden behind and climb the rugged wild land beside. No man’s land. They weren’t allowed to go there as children. Everyone knew about the children that were taken by the old witch woman who lived there, who couldn’t have children of her own – Marie’s own version of the Bogie man. It worked to a point. It wasn’t until their teens that they started hanging out there. Cormac and Donal had taken the fourteen-year-old Irish college students there for drinking sessions during the night while they were away from their Dublin homes for three weeks in the summer to learn Irish. It was fairly tame stuff, drinking and smoking, kissing and whatever body parts they were lucky enough to get their hands on, but one night Donal had broken his ankle, gone over it on a rock, so they had to alert their parents, and it was game over. The students’ disappointed parents had come to collect them and, crying, the girls had shamefully returned to Dublin, the talk of the school year, the shame of the school, the stuff of legend. While Cormac and Donal spent the summer grounded, Marie had learned not to allow Irish college students to stay in her house until the children were older.

Solomon and Cara pick their way across the dark land, Cara leading the way.

‘There you are,’ she announces suddenly, and Solomon catches up.

Laura and Rory are sitting on a smooth flat rock, hidden from view of the house, with a perfect view of the beach. The moon is lighting the way, the sea crashes to the shore. Rory’s arm is around Laura’s shoulder. Solomon can’t even speak, he feels his heart in his throat.

‘She’s cold,’ Rory says, with a cheeky smile.

It was always Rory who had the ability to wind him up. Solomon never had much problem with the others – and when he did they were physical fights – but Rory always managed to get inside his head. Not being able to pronounce Rory’s name had made him agitated with his youngest brother from the beginning, ever since he was born. He was bullied by the others for not being able to say it, and Rory used it to his advantage, trying to get under Solomon’s skin in any way he could.

‘It is cold out,’ Cara says. ‘No cuckoos around, though. Bit too late for that, isn’t it?’

Rory bites his lip but it doesn’t stop his smile. He looks from brother to sister, knowing he has agitated them both and enjoying the feeling. Or he’s agitated one, and the other has come to his defence. He seems proud of himself.

‘What are you two doing out here?’ Rory asks.

‘Taking photos,’ Cara says.

‘You don’t have a camera.’

‘Nope.’ She holds her stare with her brother, annoyed with him too.

Rory shakes his head and laughs. ‘Right, Laura, I think we should go inside. Turner and Hooch are worried about you.’

‘Okay,’ Laura says, looking at the three of them, worried by what she’s seeing and making Solomon feel awful for causing her to feel that way.

‘Any time you need me, when this fool is boring you, just call,’ he grins and starts to make his way across the rocks to the house. Cara follows him.

‘Are you okay?’ Solomon asks, finally finding his voice.

‘Yes.’ She smiles, then she looks down. ‘You were worried about me.’

‘Yes,’ he says awkwardly, embarrassed.

They’re so close she feels his warm breath reach her skin through the cool air. She smells beer. It’s dark but his face is half-lit by the lights of the house. Strong jaw, perfect nose. She wants to undo the topknot, run her hands through his hair. She wants to know what it feels like, see how it moves. She sees his Adam’s apple move as he swallows.

‘You didn’t need to worry about me.’

She means that she has no interest in his brother, nothing like the way he makes her feel by merely being in his company, but she knows it has come out wrong. He looks hurt. As if he has understood her to mean that she doesn’t want him to worry, because she doesn’t want him. Her heart pounds. She wants to take it back immediately, explain it properly.