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she demanded as she touched the necklace again.
     
    ‘Always,’ he told her. ‘Absolutely always.’
     
     
    She loved having a proper boyfriend. And more than that, because Brendan was nine years older than her, it made her feel superior to other girls her age. She didn’t see many of her school crowd these days, but she felt that she’d overtaken Cara and the Nikkis, who’d only gone out with boys really. Whereas she was going out with a man. She’d even overtaken Emma Walsh, who was dating Pete Ferriter from down the road. She was Brendan’s girlfriend, Domino, who was far more sophisticated than any of them.
     
    Every time they went out together she fell in love with him a little bit more. He was gentle and kind and he didn’t try to get her into bed or do any of the things her mother believed were on the high road to hell. But Dominique knew that the way she felt about him was sinful. She knew she wanted to go to bed with him. She just wasn’t sure how many dates it took before it was appropriate.
     
    ‘When are we going to see this boyfriend of yours?’ Evelyn asked as Dominique went out one night, her straight hair agonisingly teased into curls and held in place with industrial amounts of hairspray (Emma had shown her how to do this, and Dominique wouldn’t have spent the time or the effort on anyone but Brendan).
     
    ‘Sometime,’ she replied carelessly.
     
    ‘I want to know what he’s like.’
     
    ‘He’s lovely,’ said Dominique, ‘and that’s all you need to know.’
     
    Evelyn pursed her lips. But she didn’t get the opportunity to say anything else. Dominique had gone out, slamming the front door behind her.
     
    The thought of her gorgeous boyfriend meeting her over-strict parents filled Dominique with dread. When she was with Brendan she felt positively grown up, but she knew that her parents would treat her exactly the same in front of him as they always did - as though she was still a child who didn’t know her own mind. Brendan frequently offered to pick her up when they were going out together, but she always said that it was too much trouble and that she’d meet him in the city centre. He lived near Portobello and there wasn’t a convenient bus that could leave him in Drimnagh. Whenever he pointed out that he could always get a taxi, she’d look at him in horror and said that that was far too expensive. He would smile and say that he could afford it - he was earning decent money on the building site - but she’d shake her head and tell him to save what he had for the company he planned to set up. The office block would be finished soon, she reminded him, and then he’d need every spare penny.
     
    ‘You’re a great girl,’ he’d say each time she insisted on it. ‘You really are.’ But she knew she wasn’t. She knew that her main motivation was simply keeping him away from her parents, because she was terrified that the day he met them would be the day he decided that if all girls ended up like their mothers, he should cut his losses with Dominique Brady pretty damn quick, and she was so completely and utterly in love with him that the idea of losing him filled her with horror.
     
    But the night they were invited to a twenty-first birthday party (which was their sixth date), Brendan insisted on picking her up. The party was in Clondalkin after all, he told her, and so calling to the Brady home was more or less on the way. Dominique reluctantly agreed and was ready half an hour before he was due to arrive, so that she could answer the door and be out of the house before her parents even knew he was there. Evelyn, however, was as determined to meet Dominique’s boyfriend as Dominique was to stop her. And so as soon as the doorbell had rung, and even as Dominique - who had been waiting in the hallway - opened the door, she was fussing around behind her telling Brendan to come inside, that it was lovely to finally meet him.
     
    ‘We don’t have time,’ said