‘Will you do a few extra hours again for me tonight? Alice’s brother is coming across from Fermoy and I said I’d take him up to Lyons’s for a few.’

‘Not a bother,’ said John, gazing mournfully out the window of their one-room barracks. ‘Sure what else would I be doing?’

Sergeant Gerry Nolan looked pitifully at his colleague. The two of them had been keeping law and order in the village of Carney together for the past five years and Gerry didn’t know a better man. The sergeant was a good deal older and had gone soft about his edges. But he had worked in New York in his youth and, as a seasoned cop, he knew John Connolly was the real thing. He hated to see him like this.

In the past fortnight John had begun to worry that Noreen was not planning to come back and marry him. He had been concerned, of course, from the beginning. John was no fool. He had always worried that he was not enough for her. But then, any man who loves a woman properly, as he loved Noreen, knows he is not enough for her. No man, no matter how fantastic he is, is enough for any woman. Women need other things apart from men. Children, furniture, a sense of purpose – even work. Women didn’t need men for anything, apart from for the money they earned and the work they did. Noreen did her own work and earned her own money, so John was utterly surplus to requirements. John understood, always, that Noreen was only doing him a favour in being with him, so he sang for his supper. Proud, intelligent women like Noreen liked to live on a pedestal. Her father had built the pedestal for her already, and she was sitting pretty on that by the time John came along. So he simply raised the pedestal up higher. So high, in fact, that she had decided to use it as a springboard to propel herself over to London and start a new life. Without him.

John did not know what to do with himself without her. The natural order, as he understood it, was that your mother looked after you until you reached adulthood. Once there, a man did whatever he needed to do to get himself a woman. Got himself a job and kept himself neat and clean, went to dances and maintained a temperate relationship with drink. Once you found a woman you liked you did whatever it took to get her to marry you, short of pulling her by the hair into a cave. But that too, if it worked. Once you had a woman, you kept her up on a pedestal and did whatever you had to do to keep her there. Because, John believed, as long as a man had a woman, he could do anything. Without a woman, a man was nothing. If he found a woman he loved and one who loved him back? Jesus – that was great stuff altogether. John had never dreamt of meeting a woman he got on with as well as, and loved as deeply as, Noreen Lyons. Perhaps that’s what the problem had been. It had been too good to be true.

When Noreen left, she promised it was not a permanent thing. ‘I’ll be back,’ she said. ‘I love you John Connolly. We will get married; I just need to do this. I need to get away and, you know—’

‘Spread your wings,’ he said, quickly interrupting her. He didn’t want her to spell it out for him, and he was afraid she might.

In the weeks since she had gone, John had clung to Noreen’s promise like an emotional life raft. In the past few days it had begun to sink.

He was heartbroken. He lost his appetite. He began to feel worthless, despairing and lonely. He was nothing without her. John wished he could get angry or indignant with her for ditching him like this. Robbing him of his future, but he couldn’t. He understood why she had gone. She wanted to break free – taste life. He got that. John just missed her. That was all. Talking to her. Sharing the gossip and the craic at the end of each day. Putting his face into her soft hair when she embraced him. The secure, happy feeling that each embrace would soon be a daily occurrence, affection on tap. And the rest of it. The ‘bad’ thing would become the ‘good’ thing. He couldn’t wait for that, although he knew, too, that Noreen had an appetite for being a bit bad. That would be their challenge, coupling her impulsive nature with his own need for routine and certainty. Although it seemed now, along with the joy of marriage, there would be no challenges to face either.

Noreen had been gone almost a month now, and there hadn’t been a peep out of her. Not a letter, a phone call to the pub looking for him – nothing. Frank, her father, was furious with her for leaving her fiancé in the lurch, but John knew that didn’t help either. He didn’t need Frank’s approval to win Noreen back. In fact, Noreen was so contrary that her father’s blessing would almost certainly turn her against him.

‘Come into the house before the shift,’ Gerry said. ‘Alice says she’d like to throw a bit of dinner into you.’

Aside from the heartbreak the worst thing about being abandoned by Noreen was having every wife and mother in the village trying to feed him.

‘Ah no, Gerry. Tell Alice thanks. Mam has a bit of bacon and cabbage left out for me from yesterday.’

There was a pause, into which John sighed. Gerry watched the now familiar look of broken misery flatten his usually jovial features, as he lifted the mug of tea to his lips and took a small sip.

Big man broken.

He couldn’t take it any more.

‘Oh for God’s sake, man, just go over to London and see her.’

‘Who?’

‘Are you really going to make me spell it out?’

He put the mug down and gazed out the window. A big, strong man mooning over a dame. If there was anything more insufferable, Gerry didn’t know what it was.

‘She won’t want to see me.’

‘Of course she will.’

Then he sighed again and said, ‘She’s moved on. She doesn’t love me any more.’

‘To hell with it,’ Gerry said. ‘I’m sick of looking at you like this.’

John raised his eyebrows and, for a moment, Gerry caught a glimpse of the old John and thought he might give him a belt round the head. But Gerry liked him too much to let it go.

‘As of tomorrow you’re on four weeks’ leave.’

‘But…’

‘No buts. I can manage. Skinny will have to get himself across the bog, or rot – and his wife will get her pension.’

‘I don’t think…’

‘You’re going to London, John, and that’s an order. Have some fun. Take your girl to a show. Take her out to dinner. Win her back, for God’s sake.’

John’s eyes filled with tears.

‘I don’t know if I can.’

If there was one thing a New York cop found unendurable, it was grown men crying and acting like wimps.

He stood up, pushed a couple of inches of his barrel-like stomach into his trousers and said, ‘You’re no use to me like this Guard Connolly. Be a man, for God’s sake. Now – go and get your girl and bring her home. London. Tomorrow. And that’s the end of it.’

❊

The morning Shirley got back from holiday Coleman called her into the office. He didn’t dress it up.

‘You’re fired.’

Her face set and her lip quivered but Shirley didn’t do vulnerable. She looked more angry than upset.

She didn’t ask Coleman why, but he told her anyway.

‘You’ve been scamming the bar with Brian.’

She stood staring at him silently for a moment, then lit a cigarette.

‘Aren’t you going to say anything?’

Even by Shirley’s standards this aggressive silence was unnerving.

She took a long drag of her cigarette, blew the smoke in his direction then narrowed her eyes and pointed at him saying, ‘You’ll regret this,’ before turning on her heels.

Although you would never have seen it, as she walked out the door of the club where she had worked for over ten years, every inch of Shirley’s heart wished it had turned out differently.

Men.

Even the good ones made things bad.

❊

While her relationship with her flatmates was falling apart, Noreen’s career was taking off. Coleman had put her in charge of the bar and all of the floor girls at Chevrons. She didn’t ask what had happened to Shirley. The woman was history that was all she knew. There was no announcement made. Shirley simply did not return to work after the holiday she had been on when Noreen started. Noreen figured that Coleman had fired her. Although nothing was said, Noreen thought it was probably because she was in on the bar scam with Brian. In any case, Noreen assured Coleman she could run the whole lot if he allowed her to recruit her own bar staff. That was how she met Handsome. Quite by chance, he came in one evening looking for Coleman.

The place was starting to fill up and Noreen was getting prepared for a busy shift when he marched up to bar and said, ‘Is the boss in?’

The dreamboat had jet black hair slicked back from a brooding brow with dark, perfectly trimmed eyebrows and piercing, hypnotic blue eyes that sparkled careless, macho ice. His nose was Roman, his jawline sharp and chiselled. He was the most beautiful man Noreen had ever seen. She knew at once he was a gangster by the casual way he carried himself and the way he asked to see the boss.

‘I’m looking for a bit of work.’

Coleman had asked not to be disturbed so Noreen said, ‘I’m the boss.’

He leaned back and smiled at her. Sardonically, although she doubted if he would know what it meant. She wriggled in her mini.

‘Have you got a problem with that?’ she said, baiting him.

‘Nah,’ he said, popping a cigarette in the side of his mouth. ‘I like strong women.’

‘Good,’ she said, a thrill rushing through her, ‘because I need someone to start behind the bar right now. If you can pull a pint it’s yours. You got a name?’

‘They just call me Handsome,’ he said, in a smooth, cockney drawl.

A gangster called Handsome. Not Ironing Board after the laundry-as-a-weapon or Coleman, like the condiment. Just an accurate testament to good looks. Noreen’s dangerous-bad-boy radar went red. He was hot stuff alright. In fact, Handsome was way better looking than Coleman. Nonetheless, professionalism took precedence and she made him pull a pint for her. She could feel him tense when she stood over him but it was important, with all men, to let them know who was in charge. He took it because he had to and, with a bit of guidance, pulled an adequate pint. In any case, she reasoned, his bar skills didn’t matter. His divine looks would keep the customers and the girls happy. She put him to work, there and then, on the lunchtime shift. It was not until later that Noreen discovered Handsome was Shirley’s ex-husband. If anything, the girls seemed nervous of him. Noreen put that down to Shirley’s fierce reputation. Handsome liked strong women and she and Shirley had that in common. If the pretty waitresses were scared to go near him because of Shirley, then that was less competition for her. Coleman, too, didn’t seem thrilled to have him there when he stuck his head out the door and saw the place flying.

‘I don’t like that guy, Noreen. Why did you pick him?’

‘He’s an excellent barman,’ she lied. ‘Anyway, I’ve hired him now, and we’re out the door so you’ll just have to put up with him. Don’t worry, I’ll handle him. He won’t bother you.’

‘It’s not me I’m worried about,’ Coleman muttered, but not loud enough for Noreen to hear. She’d find out from the girls soon enough what Handsome was like. What the hell was Handsome Devers doing around here anyway? This wasn’t his patch. Maybe he’d run out of people to annoy or maybe he thought he had some edge over Coleman. Something to do with Shirley perhaps? Coleman’s head hurt trying to figure it all out. Anyway, he didn’t want to unsettle Noreen. He needed her out there running the club for him. Noreen keeping the place ticking over was the one thing he could rely on these days.

While the club buzzed, Coleman sat in his office, as he was in the habit of doing lately. He was feeling confused and kept going over and over his experience with Lara.

Lara had seemed to want him. She made him feel complete. For the first time in his life, he knew he was somewhere he utterly belonged. Surely that meant something to her as well as him? It could not have just been him. Otherwise he would never have done what he did and said what he said.

‘I love you.’ The three words had slipped out of his mouth before he was even aware he wanted to say them. It had been a physical, emotional reaction. A thoughtless instinct, a knee jerk. If he had thought about it, he wouldn’t have said it, of course.

As he sat smoking at his desk, pretending to file papers, a memory kept floating to the surface of his mind. Unwanted flotsam from a painful childhood he had tried too hard to forget. He had said those words once before. He was eight years old and in the infirmary of a children’s home, one of the rough ones, being treated for measles. She was a nurse and he could not remember her name. More likely, he was never told it but he remembered, now, that she was Irish. She nursed him in the infirmary and wasn’t like all the other old bitches. She was young, fat and kind. She bathed him in warm water using a bar of lavender soap she smuggled in from home. ‘That aul’ carbolic is rotten,’ she said. He remembered the funny way she spoke and her gentle hands holding the sponge to his skin. The sweet, feminine smell. He cried as she washed him. She thought it was because he was sick, but it wasn’t that. He was upset because he was getting better and would soon have to leave the infirmary, and her, behind.

Afterwards as she dried him with a towel he said, ‘Please can I stay with you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, her jolly face suddenly older and serious, ‘but you have to go back.’

He put his arms around her waist and said, ‘I love you.’ He just said it to try to get her to let him stay. She sent him back anyway. If she had loved him, she might have taken him home.

He thought Lara was going to take him home. Perhaps he had fallen in love with her because she was Irish like the nurse. Although, why did you fall in love with people? Was there a reason? He wished there was, because then he could make it go away and stop this torture. Then again, now that he had tasted her love, all he wanted was to have it back. Maybe it was because he had waited so long for her, the moment of their being together had felt finite to him. He had made love without caution, or the performance of sex for the sake of it. He had moved around and into her without thought or hesitation, but then, his guard down, he had stupidly allowed his heart to speak in the same way. Coleman had not even been sure that he had said the words out loud, until she stiffened in his relaxed embrace and made her excuses.

Coleman had been avoiding her ever since. It seemed the only thing he could do. For both of them. She clearly didn’t feel the same way about him, although he found that hard to believe. When they had been making love, he was never more certain of anything in his life; they were not simply meant to be together but together already. Coleman had made love to a lot of women but he had never felt that raw, that vulnerable and yet, that safe with a woman. There was a certainty in her eyes when they met his, as she bore down on him. No pretence, just an honest coupling.

For the first time in his life, Coleman felt what it was not to be alone. And yet, after that – she had left him.

He was sitting in his office, feeling confused, trying to distract himself by playing around with some papers for the accountant when the phone rang.

It was Chevron.

After a few pleasantries, Chevron asked to speak to Shirley.

Coleman took a deep breath and said that he had fired her.

‘I know it’s shocking Bobby, but she’d set up a scam with Brian. Siphoning off drink and selling it back to the suppliers. I didn’t want to believe it, but it checked out and she more or less admitted it to me when I confronted her after she came back from Spain.’

Bobby didn’t respond so Coleman added, ‘She was on holiday.’

Nothing.

‘I thought she might have visited you and Maureen while she was over.’ Wrong thing to say. Shirley and Bobby were old friends. The news had obviously silenced his usually loquacious boss. ‘Maybe I should have called you earlier but I wanted to talk to her first. I had no choice, Bobby. I have to protect the business – you know?’

Then there was another pause before Bobby said, ‘Strange timing.’ Pause. ‘Why did you wait ’til she got back from Spain?’

Coleman was confused.

‘Because I only found out what was happening while she was away.’

‘I see.’ Another pause. Coleman looked across the empty office at the closed, black leather door. He hated the phone. Bobby was a strange fish. Coleman could always read him. Since he was a young man he had learned to read his mentor’s moods, see when he was getting wound up, anxious, agitated. Coleman could always appease him, calm him down. But when he wasn’t in the room, Coleman felt powerless. All he could do was sit and wait for him to respond to the bad news.

‘So, how’s the boutique going?’

Coleman breathed a sigh of relief.

‘Yeah, good. Doing some business, you know.’

‘I’m going to come over. Take a look at my new venture.’

Shit! Panic. Coleman had been intending to break it to Lara that the business wasn’t strictly set up like he had promised. She was making a name for herself, that was the main thing. Lara wasn’t a bread head. She just wanted to make dresses. The arrangement he set out with Chevron giving backing for a high profile premises on the Kings Road to be opened, more or less overnight, helped him do that quickly. At some point down the road, Coleman had planned for himself and Lara to buy him out. He had been going to fill her in, just the time had not been right. He thought their afternoon of lovemaking was signalling a new, intimate beginning that would have enabled him to tell her. But now that was gone. This was not the time for Lara to find out she was on the payroll of Bobby Chevron.

Bobby found his voice again.

‘Maureen needs some new dresses. To be honest, I’m getting a bit bored over here. I quite like the idea of getting stuck into a new venture. I always fancied myself as a bit of a fashion impresario. What do you think, Coleman? Have I got what it takes to be one of these nancy-boy designers? Poncing about in a blouse? Ha, ha.’

Did his laugh sound brittle and forced or was he being serious? Without seeing him, it was impossible to tell. It was impossible to know what to say for the best. All Coleman knew was he had to put him off. And quickly. Chevron was an impulsive sod. He could be on a plane from Spain by the end of the week. Earlier, if there was one.

‘Probably not such a good idea, Bobby. Having a few teething problems. Late stock, a few dodgy designs and that. I’d rather wait until everything is just right before giving you the grand tour.’

It didn’t sound convincing, even to him. But, after another of his pauses, Chevron took a sharp breath and said, ‘Yeah. You’re probably right, Coleman. I’ll leave you to it. I’ll tell Maureen she’ll just have to hold out for her new gear.’

Coleman had an idea.

‘Tell you what. Why don’t I get Lara to send Maureen over a package? A few bits and pieces. Got to keep the ladies happy.’

There was a break into which he heard Chevron’s heavy breathing. Lighting a cigar, probably.

‘Now that,’ Chevron said, ‘is an excellent idea, my son.’ Then his mouth stuffed with the stogie he added, ‘Nothing too fancy mind. Don’t want to keep the good stuff from the customers.’

‘Nonsense,’ Coleman said, feeling relieved, ‘only the best for Mrs Chevron.’

‘Coleman,’ Bobby said, ‘a pleasure as always.’ Before hanging up he added, ‘You do know you is like a son to me?’

‘Thanks,’ said Coleman. He never knew what to say when Bobby said that. He certainly didn’t feel like his son. Or even his brother. It felt like he was just saying it to keep him on side. Keep him in check.

In any case, the call had ended well, and he was relieved about that.

When he put the phone down, he also made a decision.

I love you. That could not happen again. Ever.

However this panned out, Lara, the business, Chevron – love had to be taken off the agenda.

There was a reason he had never let himself fall in love before, and Coleman had allowed himself to forget what that was.

Control. The business was sliding, Noreen was good but she could not be expected to run Chevrons on her own. She had just employed that lowlife Devers, and he had let it happen by taking his eye off the ball.

Lara didn’t love him back. That’s what happened when you took the risk of loving people and it was too big a risk for Coleman. If you were stupid enough to fall in love, as he had been, the least you could do was be a man about it, and not go around snivelling ‘I love you’. He cringed just thinking about it. Never again. Ever.

Coleman was going to toughen up.

If Lara wanted him, she could come and get him. He was happy to oblige, but otherwise, he wasn’t going to make a fool of himself. A man had limits, and Coleman had reached his.

Her silence had spoken for itself. Now he was going to do the same thing. He had lived without love for thirty-four years of his life. He wasn’t going to go whining about it now.

He put on his jacket and went out to the club where he found Noreen pushing the last of the customers out the door. He looked around and checked that Handsome was gone. Arthur had taken a rare night off, otherwise the psycho would never have got one foot inside the door. Coleman made a mental note to tell Arthur not to kick him out straight away, but to put up with him for a while, until Noreen was ready to get rid of him, which she would be soon enough, he felt sure.

‘You alright locking up on your own Noreen?’ he said, double checking.

‘Not a bother,’ she said. ‘Go on, I’m grand here.’ She ushered him out and locked the door behind him.

Then Noreen headed out to the back stock room where Handsome was changing a barrel.

She stood at the door and watched him roll the heavy, wooden casket across the stone floor. He had rolled up his sleeves and she could see the muscles on his arms hardening.

She leaned against the wall and arranged her legs in a seductive V.

‘Need a hand with that?’

He turned and looked across at her. In that moment, there was something in his expression that Noreen didn’t like. Something unpleasant. She couldn’t put her finger on it. Disdain? Arrogance? Whatever it was, it killed the fantasy she had been harbouring of seducing her new charge in the stock room after hours.

‘If you was offering more than a hand I might take it.’

The niggle grew to a no. Not tonight. Maybe tomorrow. If he behaved himself.

‘Now, now, Handsome. You just change that barrel for me like a good lad while I go upstairs and settle the bar.’

Handsome took two long strides towards her and said something, almost under his breath. It sounded like, ‘You fucking tease…’ But that couldn’t be right. Before it had time to register, however, Noreen felt her body being pushed to one side, and as Handsome looked behind her, a shocked expression slapped itself across his pretty face.

Before she turned, a big booming voice with a heavy Cork accent said, ‘Oi! Take one more step towards my woman, you filthy hound, and I’ll rip your head clean off your shoulders!’