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his head in the direction of the main party room. ‘Maggie’s told me you’ve all become thick as
thieves. God help us men. A new force of nature. Something else to be reckoned with.’
    I laughed. ‘Well, yes, it seems that way’ I was beginning to feel completely recovered, apart from the delightful and uncomfortable hammering of my heart.
    ‘Hope you know what you’re letting yourself in for,’ and he took a huge swig of beer. ‘They’re a pair of witches, those two, d’you know that?’
    ‘Well, now there’s three of us, so we can be wicked together, like the witches in Macbeth’
    ‘“When shall we three meet again?”’ he declaimed, striking a dramatic pose: back of hand to top of forehead. ‘Did it for my Leaving Cert. That’s about the
only bit I can remember.’
    ‘“In thunder, lightning or in rain.”’ I said. I was aware that I was flirting madly now.
    ‘Pure English?’ he asked.
    I shook my head. ‘No – English and French. What about you?’
    He grinned. ‘Medicine. Though I don’t know how anyone could ever want to be a patient of mine. I’m in third year. Maybe I’ll get better.’
    I knew that I was already thinking: third year. That’s good. At least he’s got a few more years to go. I was already feeling his loss, that gnawing anxiety that one day he’d
walk away from me and I’d never get him back. On that night, I knew without knowing that here was someone I would always need, someone I’d never want to let go.
    This is where I came in, I thought. This is how my life began: first Georgie, then Maggie. And now this. Paul and I were about to begin, too. I knew it, I could feel it. So many beginnings. So
much that happened over and over and over again.
    There was movement in the hallway. We both watched as the Midnight Cowboy pulled on a full-length army coat over his bare chest and underpants, opened the front door and lurched forward in his
boots, disappearing down the garden path out into the cold night beyond.
    Paul raised his can. ‘Welcome to madness,’ he said.
    I poured milk into my cup and stirred the tea carefully. Then I threw away the teabag. It was all I could do to stop my hands from trembling.
    Welcome, indeed.
    To madness.
    What I remember next is that the party room seemed to empty all at once. Paul and I were the only ones left that could loosely be called guests. We had stayed in the kitchen,
and now we stood at the door, both of us observing the after-party slump in the living room. Georgie was half-asleep on the rickety sofa, while Danny sat on the floor between her feet with his head
resting in her lap. I’d noticed that the more stoned he became, the more his physical presence seemed to deflate. Now, snoring gently, he looked pale and spent, somehow. Ordinary.
    Paul nudged me to look over at Maggie. She was kneeling by the stereo, flicking through one of the cardboard boxes that contained her collection of vinyls. On the floor beside her was a
half-finished glass of beer, flat and tired-looking, with white froth clinging to the sides.
    ‘Watch her,’ he said. ‘You’d better get used to this if you’re goin’ to live with her.’
    As though she’d just heard us, Maggie turned towards where we were standing and waved a psychedelic record sleeve in the air. I recognized it at once. ‘This one’s for
you-hoo,’ she called. My chest tightened.
    Paul looked at me. ‘She means you,’ he said. ‘I was never big into the Beatles. More a Stones man myself. Fancy a beer now? Or a glass of wine?’
    ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘why not. Wine, please. White, if there’s any left.’ Maybe if I could be alone for a moment I’d have the time to gather myself. I’d told
Maggie I loved the Beatles, told her how John Lennon had saved my life, dying on December the eighth. He had lain spent and bleeding on a New York pavement, five years to the day after my mother
abandoned us. My brand-new seventeen-year-old self had rejoiced. Not because he