‘I don’t want you going near the bloke again.’

Noreen was having a bad day. Arthur had just got wind of the fact that she’d employed Handsome in the bar.

‘He is bad news, Noreen. Baaaad news. Do you hear me?’

‘I hear you, Arthur,’ she said, driving the drying cloth so far into the glass, she nearly broke it. ‘I’m just not listening.’

‘This is stupid, Noreen, he’s a daaangerous character.’

Noreen thought that was pretty rich coming from someone who nearly killed a man with an ironing board.

‘You’ll find I can be pretty dangerous myself if you don’t shut up!’

Arthur muttered something about ’aving words with Coleman and sloped off.

Noreen picked up another glass from the draining board and felt a bit sick. Not eaten-too-many-biscuits sick. Emotionally-upset sick. Noreen could not remember ever having felt this way before. A kind of empty, hollow dread, as if something rotten was around the corner. Or worse, nothing at all was around the corner.

As she was putting the glass on the shelf she saw Lara come down the stairs.

With nobody else there she had no choice but to address Noreen. She left a large envelope marked ‘stock receipts’ on the bar and said, ‘Would you give these to Coleman please?’

Coleman was in his office and there was no reason that Lara could not give them to him herself. However, Lara and Coleman had not spoken, at least not that Noreen had observed, since that afternoon when she had seen her come away from what she assumed was a passionate encounter.

Noreen was finding the coldness between her and Lara increasingly painful. The resentment she held towards Lara for keeping her Coleman affair a secret from her had gone. Especially as it seemed that Coleman had been using Lara, after all, in which case, Lara had been right to keep quiet about their encounter. However, Noreen could not seem to find a way of breaking the ice.

‘No problem,’ she said, her eyes down.

‘Thank you,’ Lara said in a clipped singsong tone, before heading straight back up the stairs.

As she watched her friend leave Noreen felt impossibly sad. It wasn’t just Lara. It was a lack of contact. No how are things? What are we having for dinner? Any news chitchat. The only people she had to talk to now were the punters and Arthur. Handsome had turned out to be a useless barman and a worse conversationalist. He was pretty but boring as all hell. Plus, Arthur’s dark warnings had taken any sheen off her fancying him whatsoever.

She craved John. He was the one person she could tell everything to. Had she been wrong to let him go so easily? It seemed that everything had gone wrong.

For the first time in her life, Noreen suspected that the empty feeling she had was loneliness. So she decided to go and visit her brother Matthew.

She called the seminary and they informed her that he was at the National Gallery.

As her bus trundled along the Embankment, Noreen looked out the window and realised that she felt better already. She wondered how she had managed to be in London for this many weeks and never been into central London before. The only places she had been since arriving here were Chevrons, the flat and Fred’s cafe. Yet, now that she was here, looking out on the River Thames, seeing Tower Bridge, Big Ben, Noreen did not have any great sense of adventure or excitement about being near the famous places she had seen in films and read about in books since she was a little girl. For Noreen, the kick she got out of life was from the people around her. What they were doing, who they were having sex with, who they wished they were having sex with.

Perhaps her motives in seeing Matthew were not entirely familial loneliness after all. Noreen knew that Lara had been to see him. After all, she had given her his address. She was not in a position to ask Lara how the visit with her brother had gone but she was longing to know how they had got on.

She managed to locate Matthew after traipsing around room after room, until she finally found somebody who unearthed him from the bowels of this huge, ancient place. This one building was the size of the whole of Carney. It was massive. Rather than be impressed or amazed, she felt rather uncomfortable in its grand, imposing environs.

‘Isn’t this the most amazing place?’ was, annoyingly, the first thing he said to her. ‘Have you been to see Caravaggio?’

As much as she hated being in this huge, cold place filled with ancient old stuff, Matthew loved it.

‘Never mind that,’ she snapped. ‘Did Lara come to see you?’

Matthew squirmed.

‘Yes she did. Last week.’

‘And?’

‘And what?’

‘And what did she say? What did you say? And don’t skimp. I want to know every minute detail.’

‘Mind your own business.’

‘She told you to mind your own business?’

‘No. I’m telling you to mind your own business.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m your sister. You are my business.’

‘No I’m not. I’m my own man, Noreen, and it’s time you realised that.’

‘That’s even more ridiculous. You joined the church so you wouldn’t have to be your own man and make your own life – and now they own you.’

Noreen knew it was a bit harsh but she had to put a halt to his gallop. Except, Matthew threw his head back, lifting himself up a few inches above her and said, ‘Actually, I’m leaving the church.’

She was not expecting that.

‘Oh really? And where are you going?’

‘I don’t know, but I’ve fallen in love and plan to leave as soon as I’ve finished this restoration course.’

Noreen laughed. The soft eejit. He must have read something into Lara’s visit. It wouldn’t be the first time her stupid brother had picked up the wrong end of the stick.

‘Look,’ she said, trying to sound kind. ‘Whatever Lara might have said to you, Matthew, take it from me, there’s no way that she’s intending to take you back.’

‘It’s not Lara,’ he said, a hint of sheepishness creeping into his voice. ‘It’s somebody else.’

Noreen reeled. He had met somebody else. How? When?

‘Who?’

‘You don’t know her.’

‘What’s her name?’

He opened his mouth to say Annie’s name then looked at his bossy sister and realised she was right. He had to make his own life. Starting right here, right now, by holding his ground and telling his interfering sister to back the hell off!

‘Does Da know?’

‘I said, mind your own—’

‘Did you write to Ma? She won’t be happy.’

‘Noreen.’

‘If you tell me who this girl is then maybe—’

‘NOREEN! Will you please mind your own bloody business!’

Cursing. From a priest. Well, nearly a priest. Noreen got up on her high horse.

‘Fine!’ she said. ‘Be that way but don’t come crying to me when…’ she couldn’t think what that ‘when’ was. Matthew was leaving the priesthood, as she always thought he should, to make his own life, as she has advised. She should be pleased. ‘Oh never mind!’ she finished then turned on her heels.

As she flounced off across Trafalgar Square, Noreen wasn’t sure why she was so upset or crying as bitterly as she was. All she knew was that she was hurt by the fact that nobody – nobody – was confiding in her any more. She felt shut out of everybody’s life. Even her own brother was telling her to mind her own business. The problem was, Noreen realised, she still didn’t have any business of her own to mind. She had lost her lover, her friend and now, it seemed, a brother. The only business that was hers to mind was Chevrons. And, if she wanted to spend her life managing a pub, she could have stayed at home.

As Matthew watched his sister bumble across the broad, magnificent square with her capable, mannish stride he could see from the hunch of her shoulders that she was hurt. He felt regretful about that. He also felt like a stupid fool for telling Lara, and now blabbermouth Noreen, that he was planning to leave the priesthood for a woman he had barely met. One who, in actual fact, he had blown off in that stupid, clumsy way of his.

As Matthew watched his sister disappear behind the great lions onto the Mall, he checked his watch. What time had Annie said she would be at the Peter Pan statue?

What was the point though? Yes, he told those two he was leaving the priesthood for Annie but, in reality, it was simply that meeting her had given him clarity that it was the right thing to do. He didn’t actually stand a chance of being with her. Especially after acting like such an idiot.

Matthew looked down at his soutane. It felt not just uncomfortable any more, but wrong. His contemporaries all complained about the comfort of the soutane, but never about the symbolism of wearing a uniform that marked them out as God’s army. Most of the men he was in the seminary with were good men. Well-intentioned, honourable men. They struggled with their faith and their vow of celibacy, but they did so gracefully, manfully. Had Matthew ever been a proper man at all, he wondered? Certainly, he knew he was a fraud. And with that certain knowledge, his mind was made up. The pretence stopped today. Now. He would have to give up his studies and return to Ireland, in all likelihood alone, with his tail between his legs. There would be shame and recriminations, but the lying had to stop.

Matthew was wearing a priest’s black trousers and white shirt under his soutane. He reached up to his neck, unbuttoned and uncoupled his priest’s collar and stuffed it into the deep pockets of his skirt, pulling out his wallet from the same pocket. He had been to the bank the day before and counted through twenty-five pounds.

Enough money, surely, to buy a pair of jeans and a colourful shirt, something that might send the right message to a girl. If he moved quickly, he might get up to Oxford Street, kit himself out and get to the Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens to meet her by 2 p.m.