‘Perhaps he’s not,’ I say, mildly, sipping my water.

‘He is, his wife died and he doesn’t have a girlfriend.’

Jeez, Devlin. ‘His brother said that?’

‘No, Lucas did. I asked him if he has anyone back in Dublin and he said no and I said oh you’re not married then or anything I thought you would be and he said well I was but she died. I said what of and he said of cancer. I said are you seeing anyone now and he said no.’

‘Maybe he’s not ready yet, after losing his wife like that.’

‘No he said it wasn’t that at all, he’s well ready but he’d not met anyone he was into and that he had a jawbone view of human nature and that most people only let you down.’

‘A jawbone view?’

‘A long word like that. Def began with J.’

‘Ja … jaundiced?’

‘Yeah! I thought that was when you turn yellow.’

‘It is.’

‘He thinks most people turn yellow?’

‘No.’ Running at two speeds, with one of those speeds being ‘Kitty,’ is hard work. I isolate what’s bothering me:

‘I never thought Lucas was that chatty.’ I feel slightly put out that he’s opening up to Kitty and not to me.

‘He isn’t ’cos after that I asked him what his type was and he said he’d rather not talk about his personal life thank you and did I think the barrel of Pale Rider was on the tilt.’

‘Ah.’

‘Don’t you think the tragic wife thing makes him even fitter though?’ Kitty says, nipping her straw between rabbity front teeth.

‘Hahaha, what?’

‘You know, knowing he’s sad. You want to perk him up with a bit of sex, don’t you.’

I almost spit my water.

‘What’s wrong with that?’ Kitty says. ‘To be nice!’

‘Yeah but you don’t … people don’t say things like that,’ I say.

I wish I could simply find that funny.

What if she offers? What if he says yes? What if that happens with the next girl they hire? For the first time I contemplate Lucas sleeping with another member of staff and me having to hear lurid accounts of the boss from the night before and pretend to snigger along with it. I could tolerate the phone numbers on beer mats because they reliably hit a brick wall. But sooner or later, law of averages, when there’s women flying at him from all sides? Argh.

‘Here, Georgina,’ Devlin appears, lightly coated in dust from renovations, ‘Can you nip up to the flat and ask Lucas if the plumber’s coming at four? Just shout him as you go up the stairs.’

I nod and feel a small-child thrill at being allowed into Lucas’s lair, a new, private part of the building. The flat upstairs is a door on the left behind the bar, as opposed to the right hand one that takes you up to the function room.

I pad up the stairs and call, hesitantly:

‘Lucas? Lucas …?’

I can’t hear anything beyond so I rap on the open door at the top with my knuckles. Still nothing. I peer round.

I hear his voice before he walks out of a bedroom, mobile pressed to ear. I jolt: he’s only wearing a small towel across his mid-section, grasped at the hip with one hand. In all the weeks rummaging in each other’s clothes we never actually saw anything. At first, I actually turn and cover my eyes like someone in a Carry On movie.

‘… Don’t care what you say Niamh would’ve wanted and don’t care what she did want when she was here, either, so invoking the wishes of my late wife is lost on me. Yeah well she’s not around to insist so it’s up to me. Deal with it.’

My face is hot oh no no no, stop this, I can’t blush, it’ll make it clear I was excited by sight of his chest and maybe some upper groin and perhaps I will glance again, wave at him to make my presence clear …

I look back. Phew. Yes, he has definitely filled out … Then his blazingly furious eyes meet mine, and widen, and I blunder backwards and out of the room, muttering ‘didn’t realise you were busy’ apologies.

I’m dying of embarrassment, but also, what the hell was that conversation about …? I hover for a second, trying to make sense of it, put it in a context that makes it innocuous, or at least reasonable. Of all the jarring things I could’ve overheard, Lucas sounding savage about Niamh is the last thing I expected. It wouldn’t have been anywhere near a list.

It would’ve helped to separate out the issues if he hadn’t been half naked at the time. I belt back down the stairs in a slight daze.

I contemplate the possibility that for all his solidity as a boss, Lucas McCarthy isn’t very nice to those in his personal life. Yes, he was magnificent about Robin, but I am old enough to know that people are complicated. You can be saviour in one situation, diabolical in another. I don’t know him – I must keep reminding myself of this fact. I pull myself up for thinking the way I did, for imagining we were slipping into any sort of relaxed closeness.

I walk back down and Dev says: ‘Plumber definitely on his way at four, then?’

‘Oh, I don’t know!’ I feel guilty, even though I’ve done nothing wrong. ‘He was on his phone.’

‘Right. I’ll catch him in a bit, don’t worry. Kitty and I were talking about diaries, did you ever keep one?

‘I did, actually!’ I’m effusive, in my need to channel my thoughts in another direction: ‘That was the last bit of writing I’d done, before this open mike competition. Back at school.’ Imagine if you knew the juicy sections are about your younger brother. Imagine if he knew, come to that.

Dev nudges Kitty. ‘You should start one. I wish I’d done one now.’

‘Oh my God, no one does that, what am I, some sort of Victorian person!’ Kitty says. ‘Yeah, like, I wrote my diary in my big death nightie and, like, ate mutton pie and that. Wrote it with one of those pens that are feathers.’

‘What the hell is a big death nightie?!’ I say, putting aside the fact Kitty called me ancient.

‘Those nighties that ghosts wear and they put old people in. You know. Like in a Muppet’s Christmas Carol.’

‘Hahahhaa. The Muppets’ Christmas Carol. RIP Charles Dickens.’ Devlin says.

‘I know who Charles Dickens is!’

‘Do you? My bad,’ Devlin says.

‘He’s the bear, he tells the story.’

Devlin and I look at each other and hoot and Kitty says, ‘Oh piss off!’

Lucas reappears in the bar, fully clad, and the hilarity for me evaporates. I promptly find cleaning to do, keeping my head down and keeping busy. I sense Lucas wanting to meet my eye as some sort of safety check or reassurance, and I manage to swerve any interaction. Eventually, he corners me by the ice bucket.

‘Georgina. Would you have the time for a quick chat tonight? After we’ve closed up? Come find me in the flat at half eleven?’

‘Uh …’ I hadn’t anticipated this and feel uncomfortable. I’m not sure I want to hear his excuses. On the fly, I can’t think of where I can claim to need to be at nearly midnight on a Thursday, though.

Mere hours earlier, I’d have jumped at the chance to have a beak at his belongings, enter his lair.

But I am back to not knowing who Lucas McCarthy is, and I don’t want to be drawn in and spat out a second time.

29

At the end of my shift and for a second time today, I head up the stairs to the flat, with considerably less lightheartedness than I did before.

The door’s closed this time, and Lucas answers as soon as I knock. ‘Drink?’ he says.

‘Just a cup of tea, thanks.’

‘Aw man, making me drink alone? Can’t tempt you to a whisky?’

I shrug. ‘Sure.’

I don’t like this creaky, ingratiating imposter. Say what you want about your late wife, just don’t involve me. Lucas heads to a kitchen, off the sitting room we’re in, and I survey the small spartan flat, TV in one corner, potted fern in another.

I drop down into the sofa in front of a coffee table that’s piled with pub admin flotsam and jetsam, spreadsheets, bank statements. For the first time I realise it’s probably quite lonely, being away from your home city, living above your time-sucking place of work.

Keith clatters in, feet loud on the wooden floor, and as ever, he’s gratefully seized upon by me. He settles at my feet while I pat the scruff of his neck.

Lucas hands me a glass and sits down opposite in a wicker (ha) chair, placing his whisky on the table between us.

‘I wanted to explain about earlier. The phone call I was having when you came in.’ He pauses. ‘Saying you don’t care about your late wife is quite unusual. Dev says he told you about her?’ Lucas rolls his eyes, but smiles, and I nod, self-conscious.

‘Lucas,’ I say, raising my voice slightly to ‘prim’, ‘you honestly don’t have to. It’s none of my business. I’d rather not pry.’

‘I want to explain,’ he says.

He swigs from his drink and I do alike, rather than offer any reply. On the one hand, what I heard was ugly; on the other, why explain himself, if he is a wrong un?

Maybe part of the brooding bad boy psyche. He needs to control his image.