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draping a thick blanket over all the things he didn’t want to think about, but, in fact, it had made it all worse. Paranoia: he could write a book about it.
    He closed his eyes for a few seconds, and the smell was back in his nostrils, the disinfectant that they spread so liberally around the ward. That bloody smell had clung to his clothes, so pungent that he’d had to get rid of them all once he came out. He’d burned them in a barrel in the back garden. He’d never been able to tolerate it since. Had had to ask Mary-Pat if she minded not using it any more around the house. ‘I’m allergic to it,’ he’d said, by way of explanation. She hadn’t said a word, but the next time he’d dropped in, the kitchen floor had smelled of lemons. She might be a dragon, but she did care, Pius knew that. And he couldn’t have managed without her. ‘That’s what families are for,’ she’d told him all those years ago as they’d sat in that miserable waiting room, waiting to see the on-duty guy, squeezing his hand tight. ‘That’s what they do.’
    ‘Pi, you there?’ Rosie’s voice came from around the back of the house.
    ‘Here!’ He jumped up, Bessie still under his arm, and walked around past the lean-to and Daddy’s shed to the back of the house, where the Yank and Rosie were standing, looking at something. Pius couldn’t make it out because he was short-sighted but could never find his glasses. ‘Wouldn’t that be swell for the vows?’ the Yank was saying.
    ‘Oh, yeah,’ Rosie turned as Pius came towards them. ‘It’s beautiful,’ she said to Craig. ‘What do you think, Pi?’ and she waved an arm at the old gazebo. Her hair tied up in an old yellow scarf that looked vaguely familiar, her hands in the pockets of her tiny blue jeans, a puzzled look on her face as if she was trying to unravel some mystery – she looked like a little doll, he thought, that if you twisted her limbs too much she’d break. She’d always been tiny, Rosie, but she’d had spirit, a fire inside her. Now, he wasn’t so sure. But maybe that’s what happened when you grew up. And she’d sure grown up.
    She was nodding her head in the direction of the gazebo and it was all Pius could do not to blush a bright, hot red. ‘Al fresco,’ Katy had called it that time. She’d taken him by the hand and led him towards it, her naked skin almost blue in the moonlight. She’d made him take off all his clothes. He’d asked if he could leave on his underpants, but she’d been adamant. ‘No clothes. You need to really feel what it’s like, the night air on your skin.’ He wasn’t bothered about that – after all, he’d spent most of his childhood naked: Mammy had been a big fan of it. But this was hardly the nakedness of a seven-year-old, he’d thought, as he’d felt the cold air on his erect penis, so swollen it was painful to walk. He’d had to half scuttle, like a crab, his cheeks reddening with a mixture of self-consciousness and lust.
    ‘Isn’t this amazing?’ she’d said, as they’d stood there in the tangle of vines and old buddleia, a canopy of dark green around them. In fact, it hadn’t been that amazing, he remembered. The floor was filthy and they hadn’t been able to lie down and he’d been in too much of a hurry, coming as soon as he’d slipped inside her. It had all been a bit uncomfortable, but memorable nonetheless. That was Katy – she made you do things you never thought you would. Maybe that’s why he hadn’t done anything unexpected in about twenty years.
    ‘It’s perfect,’ the Yank said, pulling Rosie towards him and kissing her tenderly on the cheek, his hand in the back pocket of her jeans. She nodded but didn’t reply, and the expression on her face was hard to read. But that was the new Rosie. It was hard to be sure how she felt about anything. In the couple of weeks since she’d been back, he hadn’t seen a flicker of the old Rosie. She seemed so … composed, that was the