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was undeniably a handful. He was hyperactive, rebellious and physically very big – so much so that by the time he hit his teens he was pretty much out of control. He got into all the usual shit, joyriding, shoplifting, burglary and, of course, drugs.
    Over the next few years, whenever the sisters met, an increasingly weary Catherine usually went out of her way to avoid the subject, and since Gina herself was pretty busy, doing her diploma in computer programming and then starting work, she hardly ever saw her nephew and heard very little about what he was up to. Though lately his name has been cropping up in the papers – and most recently in a Sunday World article she saw about the massive profits being made in DVD piracy.
    Biting her lower lip, Gina now looks up and around. St Patrick’s Cathedral flits past on the left, a new apartment complex on the right.
     
    She’s unsure what to think – though really, in Dublin, getting shot in a pub can mean only one thing, can’t it?
    As if to confirm this, the song on the radio finishes abruptly and a news bulletin comes on.
    ‘All the latest for Dublin at eleven,’ the announcer says, sounding as if he’s about fifteen and has just drunk a quadruple espresso. ‘A man in his mid-twenties has been gunned down in the beer garden of a south-side pub. It happened just before nine o’clock this evening. Witnesses claim the gunman fired three shots into the victim at point-blank range and then made his escape on a motorbike. The incident has all the hallmarks of a gangland killing –’
    Gina closes her eyes.
    ‘– and it is believed that the dead man, who hasn’t been named yet, was known to the Gardaí.’
    Oh God. Poor Catherine .
    Gina shifts around in the seat and tries to shut out the rest of the bulletin. She’d like to ask the driver to turn the radio off, or at least to turn the volume down, but she feels she’s used up any goodwill she might have had with him. She also knows that this is ridiculous. But they’re turning at the KCR now and moving pretty fast – so why rock the boat? When she arrives at Catherine’s house she’s going to need all the composure and self-possession she can muster.
    After the sports results, weather report and an ad break the music comes back on, still eighties, but this time a little less grating.
    A few minutes later, the cab turns into the road where Catherine lives, a small crescent of semi-detached houses built in the fifties – and barely half a mile from where Gina, her sisters and Noel were all born and grew up. Gina hasn’t been out here for a while and she soon remembers why. Despite growing up in Dolanstown, she has always found the design and layout of the place – as with so many of Dublin’s suburban housing estates – to be soulless and oppressive.
    At night it’s not so bad, she thinks. It’s dark, street dark, and the atmosphere is a little different.
    ‘This is fine,’ she tells the driver, ‘just here on the left.’
    The cab pulls up.
    Gina pays and gets out. It’s colder than it seemed earlier, and she’s suddenly conscious of what she’s wearing – short denim skirt, floral print top and pin-striped jacket – all fine for wandering around town in, but a little bonkers for out here, for this.
    There’s nothing she can do about it now, though – not that Catherine is going to register what Gina, or anyone else for that matter, is wearing. But Yvonne or Michelle might, and the last thing she wants to see is them exchanging glances.
    Look at madame .
    Is it Gina’s fault that they have no social lives anymore? Is it her fault that they are both stuck in a time warp? Is it her fault that they never got out of Dolanstown?
    But she’s being ridiculous again, and she knows it, and she knows why, too. It’s displacement. Because this is going to be really hard. The level of Catherine’s grief will be unimaginable. No one will be able to help her. No one will have anything more to offer her than