1He’s late to meet her. The bus was caught in traffic because of some rally in town and now he’s eight minutes late and he doesn’t know where the cafe is.

2He has never met Marianne ‘for coffee’ before. The weather is too warm today, a scratchy and unseasonal heat. He finds the cafe on Capel Street and walks past the cashier towards the door at the back, checking his phone. It’s nine minutes past three. Outside the back door Marianne is sitting in the smoking garden drinking her coffee already. No one else is out there, the place is quiet. She doesn’t get up when she sees him.

3Sorry I’m late, he says. There was some protest on so the bus was delayed.

4He sits down opposite her. He hasn’t ordered anything yet.

5Don’t worry about it, she says. What was the protest? It wasn’t abortion or anything, was it?

6He feels ashamed now that he didn’t notice. No, I don’t think so, he says.

7The household tax or something.

8Well, best of luck to them. May the revolution be swift and brutal.

9He hasn’t seen her in person since July, when she came home for her father’s Mass. Her lips look pale now and slightly chapped, and she has dark circles under her eyes. Although he takes pleasure in seeing her look good, he feels a special sympathy with her when she looks ill or her skin is bad, like when someone who’s usually very good at sports has a poor game. It makes her seem nicer somehow. She’s wearing a very elegant black blouse, her wrists look slender and white, and her hair is twisted back loosely at her neck.

10Yeah, he says. I would have a bit more energy for protesting if it was more on the brutal side, to be honest.

11You want to get beaten up by the Gardaí.

12There are worse things than getting beaten up.

13Marianne is taking a sip of coffee when he says this, and she seems to pause for a moment with the cup at her lips. He can’t tell how he identifies this pause as distinct from the natural motion of her drinking, but he sees it.

14Then she replaces the cup on the saucer.

15I agree, she says.

16What does that mean?

17I’m agreeing with you.

18Have you recently been attacked by the guards or have I missed something? he says.

19She taps a little extra sugar from a sachet into her cup and then stirs it.

20Finally she glances up at him as if remembering he’s sitting there.

21Aren’t you going to have coffee? she says.

22He nods. He’s still feeling a little breathless after the walk from the bus, a little too warm under his clothes. He gets up from the table and goes back into the main room. It’s cool in there and much dimmer. A woman in red lipstick takes his order and says she’ll bring it right out.

23*

24Until April, Connell had been planning to work in Dublin for the summer and cover the rent with his wages, but a week before the exams his boss told him they were cutting back his hours. He could just about make rent that way but he’d have nothing left to live on. He’d always known that the place was going to go out of business, and he was furious with himself for not applying anywhere else. He thought about it constantly for weeks. In the end he decided he would have to move out for the summer. Niall was very nice about it, said the room would still be there for him in September and all of that.

25What about yourself and Marianne? Niall asked. And Connell said: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know. I haven’t told her yet.

26The reality was that he stayed in Marianne’s apartment most nights anyway. He could just tell her about the situation and ask if he could stay in her place until September. He knew she would say yes. He thought she would say yes, it was hard to imagine her not saying yes. But he found himself putting off the conversation, putting off Niall’s enquiries about it, planning to bring it up with her and then at the last minute failing to. It just felt too much like asking her for money. He and Marianne never talked about money. They had never talked, for example, about the fact that her mother paid his mother money to scrub their floors and hang their laundry, or about the fact that this money circulated indirectly to Connell, who spent it, as often as not, on Marianne. He hated having to think about things like that. He knew Marianne never thought that way. She bought him things all the time, dinner, theatre tickets, things she would pay for and then instantly, permanently, forget about.

27They went to a party in Sophie Whelan’s house one night as the exams were ending. He knew he would finally have to tell Marianne that he was moving out of Niall’s place, and he would have to ask her, outright, if he could stay with her instead. Most of the evening they spent by the swimming pool, immersed in the bewitching gravity of warm water. He watched Marianne splashing around in her strapless red swimsuit. A lock of wet hair had come loose from the knot at her neck and was sealed flat and shining against her skin. Everyone was laughing and drinking. It felt nothing like his real life. He didn’t know these people at all, he hardly even believed in them, or in himself.

28At the side of the pool he kissed Marianne’s shoulder impulsively and she smiled at him, delighted. No one looked at them. He thought he would tell her about the rent situation that night in bed. He felt very afraid of losing her.

29When they got to bed she wanted to have sex and afterwards she fell asleep.

30He thought of waking her up but he couldn’t. He decided he would wait until after his last exam to talk to her about moving home.

31Two days later, directly after his paper on Medieval and Renaissance Romance, he went over to Marianne’s apartment and they sat at the table drinking coffee. He half-listened to her talking about some complicated relationship between Teresa and Lorcan, waiting for her to finish, and eventually he said: Hey, listen. By the way. It looks like I won’t be able to pay rent up here this summer. Marianne looked up from her coffee and said flatly: What?

32Yeah, he said. I’m going to have to move out of Niall’s place.

33When? said Marianne.

34Pretty soon. Next week maybe.

35Her face hardened, without displaying any particular emotion. Oh, she said. You’ll be going home, then.

36He rubbed at his breastbone then, feeling short of breath. Looks like it, yeah, he said.

37She nodded, raised her eyebrows briefly and then lowered them again, and stared down into her cup of coffee. Well, she said. You’ll be back in September, I assume.

38His eyes were hurting and he closed them. He couldn’t understand how this had happened, how he had let the discussion slip away like this. It was too late to say he wanted to stay with her, that was clear, but when had it become too late? It seemed to have happened immediately. He contemplated putting his face down on the table and just crying like a child. Instead he opened his eyes again.

39Yeah, he said. I’m not dropping out, don’t worry.

40So you’ll only be gone three months.

41Yeah.

42There was a long pause.

43I don’t know, he said. I guess you’ll want to see other people, then, will you?

44Finally, in a voice that struck him as truly cold, Marianne said: Sure.

45He got up then and poured his coffee down the sink, although it wasn’t finished. When he left her building he did cry, as much for his pathetic fantasy of living in her apartment as for their failed relationship, whatever that was.

46Within a couple of weeks she was going out with someone else, a friend of hers called Jamie. Jamie’s dad was one of the people who had caused the financial crisis – not figuratively, one of the actual people involved. It was Niall who told Connell they were together. He read it in a text message during work and had to go into the back room and press his forehead against a cool shelving unit for almost a full minute. Marianne had just wanted to see someone else all along, he thought. She was probably glad he’d had to leave Dublin because he was broke. She wanted a boyfriend whose family could take her on skiing holidays. And now that she had one, she wouldn’t even answer Connell’s emails anymore.

47By July even Lorraine had heard that Marianne was seeing someone new.

48Connell knew people in town were talking about it, because Jamie had this nationally infamous father, and because there was nothing much else going on.

49When did you two split up, then? Lorraine asked him.

50We were never together.

51You were seeing each other, I thought.

52Casually, he replied.

53Young people these days. I can’t get my head around your relationships.

54You’re hardly ancient.

55When I was in school, she said, you were either going out with someone or you weren’t.

56Connell moved his jaw around, staring at the television blandly.

57Where did I come from, then? he said.

58Lorraine gave him a nudge of reproach and he continued to look at the TV.

59It was a travel programme, long silver beaches and blue water.

60Marianne Sheridan wouldn’t go out with someone like me, he said.

61What does that mean, someone like you?

62I think her new boyfriend is a bit more in line with her social class.

63Lorraine was silent for several seconds. Connell could feel his back teeth grinding together quietly.

64I don’t believe Marianne would act like that, Lorraine said. I don’t think she’s that kind of person.

65He got up from the sofa. I can only tell you what happened, he said.

66Well, maybe you’re misinterpreting what happened.

67But Connell had already left the room.

68*

69Back outside the cafe now, the sunlight is so strong it crunches all the colours up and makes them sting. Marianne’s lighting a cigarette, with the box left open on the table. When he sits down she smiles at him through the small grey cloud of smoke. He feels she’s being coy, but he doesn’t know about what.

70I don’t think we’ve ever met for coffee before, he says. Have we?

71Have we not? We must have.

72He knows he’s being unpleasant now but he can’t stop. No, he says.

73We have, she says. We got coffee before we went to see Rear Window.

74Although I guess that was more like a date.

75This remark surprises him, and in response he just makes some non- committal noise like: Hm.

76The door behind them opens and the woman comes out with his coffee.

77Connell thanks her and she smiles and goes back inside. The door swings shut. Marianne is saying that she hopes Connell and Jamie get to know each other better. I hope you get along with him, Marianne says. And she looks up at Connell nervously then, a sincere expression which touches him.

78Yeah, I’m sure I will, he says. Why wouldn’t I?

79I know you’ll be civil. But I mean I hope you get along.

80I’ll try.

81And don’t intimidate him, she says.

82Connell pours a splash of milk in his coffee, letting the colour come up to the surface, and then replaces the jug on the table.

83Oh, he says. Well, I hope you’re telling him not to intimidate me either.

84As if you could find him intimidating, Connell. He’s shorter than I am.

85It’s not strictly a height thing, is it?

86Seen from his point of view, she says, you’re a lot taller, and you’re the person who used to fuck his girlfriend.

87That’s a nice way of putting it. Is that what you told him about us, Connell’s this tall guy who used to fuck me?

88She laughs now. No, she says. But everyone knows.

89Does he have some insecurities about his height? I won’t exploit them, I’d just like to know.

90Marianne lifts her coffee cup. Connell can’t figure out what kind of relationship they are supposed to have now. Are they agreeing not to find each other attractive anymore? When were they supposed to have stopped? Nothing in Marianne’s behaviour gives him any clue. In fact he suspects she is still attracted to him, and that she now finds it funny, like a private joke, to indulge an attraction to someone who could never belong in her world.

91*

92Back in July he went to the anniversary Mass for Marianne’s father. The church in town was small, smelling of rain and incense, with stained-glass panels in the windows. He and Lorraine never went to Mass, he’d only been in there for funerals before. He saw Marianne in the vestibule when he arrived.

93She looked like a piece of religious art. It was so much more painful to look at her than anyone had warned him it would be, and he wanted to do something terrible, like set himself on fire or drive his car into a tree. He always reflexively imagined ways to cause himself extreme injury when he was distressed. It seemed to soothe him briefly, the act of imagining a much worse and more totalising pain than the one he really felt, maybe just the cognitive energy it required, the momentary break in his train of thought, but afterwards he would only feel worse.

94That night, after Marianne went back to Dublin, he went out drinking with some people from school, to Kelleher’s first, and then McGowan’s, and then that awful nightclub Phantom around the back of the hotel. No one was around that he had ever been really close with, and after a few drinks he became aware that he wasn’t there to socialise anyway, he was just there to drink himself into a kind of sedated non-consciousness. He withdrew from the conversation gradually and focused on consuming as much alcohol as he could without passing out, not even laughing along with the jokes, not even listening.

95It was in Phantom that they met Paula Neary, their old Economics teacher.

96By then Connell was so drunk that his vision was misaligned, and beside every solid object he could see another version of the object, like a ghost.

97Paula bought them all shots of tequila. She was wearing a black dress and a silver pendant. He licked a line of salt off the back of his own hand and saw the ghostly other of her necklace, a faint white trace on her shoulder. When she looked at him she did not have two eyes, but several, and they moved around exotically in the air, like jewels. He started laughing about it, and she leaned in close with her breath on his face to ask him what was so funny.

98He doesn’t remember how he got back to her house, whether they walked or took a taxi, he still doesn’t know. The place had that strange unfurnished cleanliness that lonely houses sometimes have. She seemed like a person with no hobbies: no bookcases, no musical instruments. What do you do with yourself at the weekends, he remembers slurring. I go out and have fun, she said. This struck him even at the time as deeply depressing. She poured them both glasses of wine. Connell sat on the leather sofa and drank the wine for something to do with his hands.

99How is the football team looking this year? he said.

100It’s not the same without you, said Paula.

101She sat beside him on the couch. Her dress had slipped down slightly, exposing a mole over her right breast. He could have fucked her back when he was in school. People joked about it, but they would have been shocked if it had really happened, they would have been scared. They would have thought his shyness masked something steely and frightening.

102Best years of your life, she said.

103What?

104Best years of your life, secondary school.

105He tried to laugh, and it came out very goofy and nervous. I don’t know, he said. That’s a sad thought if that’s true.

106She started to kiss him then. This seemed like a strange thing to happen to him, unpleasant on the surface level, but also interesting in a way, as if his life was taking a new direction. Her mouth tasted sour like tequila. Briefly he wondered if it was legal for her to kiss him, and he concluded it must be, he couldn’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t be, and yet it felt substantially wrong. Every time he pulled away from her she seemed to follow him forward, so that he found himself puzzled about the physics of what was going on, and he was no longer sure whether he was sitting upright on the sofa or reclining backwards against the arm. As an experiment he tried to sit up, which confirmed he was in fact sitting up already, and the small red light which he thought might have been on the ceiling above him was just a standby light on the stereo system across the room.

107Back in school Miss Neary had made him feel so uncomfortable. But was he mastering that discomfort now by letting her kiss him on the sofa in her living room, or just succumbing to it? He’d hardly had time to formulate this question when she started unbuttoning his jeans. In a panic he tried to push her hand away, but with such an ineffectual gesture that she appeared to think he was helping her. She got the top button undone and he told her that he was really drunk, and maybe they should stop. She put her hand inside the waistband of his underwear and said it was okay, she didn’t mind. He thought he would probably black out then, but he found he couldn’t. He wished he could have. He heard Paula saying: You’re so hard. That was an especially insane thing for her to say, because he actually wasn’t.

108I’m going to get sick, he said.

109She jerked back then, pulling her dress after her, and he took the opportunity to stand up from the sofa and button his jeans back up. Cautiously she asked if he was okay. When he looked at her he could make out two separate Paulas sitting on the couch, so clearly delineated that it was no longer obvious which was the real Paula and which the ghost. Sorry, he said. He woke up the next day fully clothed on the floor of his living room. He still has no idea how he made it home.

110*

111He must be insecure about something, says Marianne now. I don’t know what.

112Maybe he’d like to be more cerebral.

113Maybe he just has good self-esteem.

114No, definitely not that. He’s …

115Her eyes flick back and forth quickly. When she does this, she looks like an expert mathematician performing calculations in her head. She sets the coffee cup back in the saucer.

116He’s what? says Connell.

117He’s a sadist.

118Connell stares at her across the table, simply allowing his face to express the alarm he feels at this remark, and she gives a cute little smile. She twists her cup around on the saucer.

119Are you serious? says Connell.

120Well, he likes to beat me up. Just during sex, that is. Not during arguments.

121She laughs, a stupid laugh that doesn’t suit her. Connell’s visual field shudders violently for a second, like the beginning of a gigantic migraine, and he lifts a hand to his forehead. He realises he is scared. Around Marianne he often feels somehow innocent, though really he’s a lot more sexually experienced than she is.

122And you’re into that, are you? he says.

123She shrugs. Her cigarette is burning out in the ashtray. She picks it up quickly and drags on it before stubbing it out.

124I don’t know, she says. I don’t know if I really like it.

125Why do you let him do it, then?

126It was my idea.

127Connell picks up his cup and takes a large mouthful of very hot coffee, wanting to do something efficient with his hands. When he replaces the cup it splashes up and spills over into the saucer.

128What do you mean? he says.

129It was my idea, that I wanted to submit to him. It’s difficult to explain.

130Well, go on and try if you want. I’m interested.

131She laughs again now. It’s going to make you feel very awkward, she says.

132Okay.

133She looks at him, maybe to see if he’s joking, and then she lifts her chin at an angle, and he knows she won’t back down from telling him about it, because that would be giving in to something she doesn’t believe about herself.

134It’s not that I get off on being degraded as such, she says. I just like to know that I would degrade myself for someone if they wanted me to. Does that make sense? I don’t know if it does, I’ve been thinking about it. It’s about the dynamic, more than what actually happens. Anyway I suggested it to him, that I could try being more submissive. And it turns out he likes to beat me up.

135Connell starts coughing. Marianne picks a small wooden coffee-stirrer out of a jar on the table and starts twisting it in her fingers. He waits for the coughing to subside and then says: What does he do to you?

136Oh, I don’t know, she says. He hits me with a belt sometimes. He likes choking me, things like that.

137Right.

138I mean, I don’t enjoy it. But then, you’re not really submitting to someone if you only submit to things you enjoy.

139Have you always had these ideas? Connell says.

140She gives him a look. He feels like the fear has consumed him and turned him into something else now, like he has passed through the fear, and looking at her is like swimming towards her across a strip of water. He picks up the cigarette packet and looks into it. His teeth start chattering and he puts a cigarette on his lower lip and lights it. Marianne is the only one who ever triggers these feelings in him, the strange dissociative feeling, like he’s drowning and time doesn’t exist properly anymore.

141I don’t want you to think Jamie’s a horrible guy, she says.

142He sounds like one.

143He’s not really.

144Connell drags on the cigarette and then lets his eyes half-close for a second. The sun is very warm, and he can sense Marianne’s body close to him, and the mouthful of smoke, and the bitter aftertaste of coffee.

145Maybe I want to be treated badly, she says. I don’t know. Sometimes I think I deserve bad things because I’m a bad person.

146He exhales. In the spring he would sometimes wake up at night beside Marianne, and if she was awake too they would move into each other’s arms until he could feel himself inside her. He didn’t have to say anything, except to ask her if it was alright, and she always said it was. Nothing else in his life compared to what he felt then. Often he wished he could fall asleep inside her body. It was something he could never have with anyone else, and he would never want to. Afterwards they’d just go back to sleep in each other’s arms, without speaking.

147You never said any of this to me, he says. When we were … It was different with you. We were, you know. Things were different.

148She twists the little strip of wood with both hands and then releases it on one side so it recoils from her fingers.

149Should I be feeling insulted? he says.

150No. If you want to hear the simplest explanation, I’ll tell you.

151Well, is it a lie?

152No, she says.

153She pauses. Carefully she sets down the wooden coffee-stirrer. She has no props now, and reaches to touch her hair instead.

154I didn’t need to play any games with you, she says. It was real. With Jamie it’s like I’m acting a part, I just pretend to feel that way, like I’m in his power.

155But with you that really was the dynamic, I actually had those feelings, I would have done anything you wanted me to. Now, you see, you think I’m a bad girlfriend. I’m being disloyal. Who wouldn’t want to beat me up?

156She covers her eyes with her hand. She’s smiling, a tired and self-hating smile. He wipes the palms of his hands on his lap.

157I wouldn’t, he says. Maybe I’m kind of unfashionable in that way.

158She moves her hand away and looks at him, the same smile, and her lips still look dry.

159I hope we can always take each other’s sides, she says. It’s very comforting for me.

160Well, that’s good.

161She looks at him then, like she’s seeing him for the first time since they sat down together.

162Anyway, she says. How are you?

163He knows the question is meant honestly. He’s not someone who feels comfortable confiding in others, or demanding things from them. He needs Marianne for this reason. This fact strikes him newly. Marianne is someone he can ask things of. Even though there are certain difficulties and resentments in their relationship, the relationship carries on. This seems remarkable to him now, and almost moving.

164Something kind of weird happened to me in the summer, he said. Can I tell you about it?