Chevrons was, at most, a twenty-minute walk from the seminary. Not, indeed, that Matthew ever had much cause to wander the Kings Road. Certainly not in his soutane. In any case, the Kings Road was the heartland of modernity. People his age embracing sex and drugs and a new kind of freedom which, while he could see it was progress of a kind, did not interest Matthew one jot. The modern world had been Lara’s domain. She had the sixties’ obsession with fashion – brightly coloured clothes, loud music and that new kind of simplistic, stick-on art which he, frankly, found offensive.

Over the past few months Matthew had missed Lara, but he did not miss the progressiveness she had sometimes foisted on him.

‘She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah…’ His ears were assaulted by loud music blaring from a shop selling Groovy Denims. Although the greater part of him wished he was wearing denims instead of what he had come to think of as his ‘hot frock’, Matthew admitted to himself that, while they had been together, he had feigned more interest in Lara’s artistic efforts than was entirely honest.

He had been a hypocrite in pretending to think of fashion as a viable art form. Another thing to feel guilty about. Another thing to apologise for when he saw her.

Matthew was dreading meeting both Lara and his twin sister. Noreen had barely spoken to him since he left her friend, and was a fierce adversary at the best of times. She would not be pleased to see him. However, being a priest was all about punishment and discomfort and, of course, martyrdom when you got good at it. Matthew could only hope his furious sister wouldn’t turn him into one of those this afternoon. It never occurred to him to pray.

Chevrons, with its battered, black door and tarnished gold plaque looked like a shady joint. More so when the door half opened and an angry, wiry man peered out at him.

‘Is Noreen Lyons here?’ Fierce as his sister was, Matthew knew it would be easier to face her before Lara.

‘Who wants her?’ the man asked. He looked Matthew up and down as if he was concealing weaponry under his skirts, before stating the obvious. ‘You’re not a regular.’

‘I’m her brother Matthew,’ he said.

The gangster (he could not be anything else) looked at him warily.

‘You a Catholic?’

There were several replies Matthew felt like giving to this question, but the funny little man didn’t look like he was joking.

‘Yes,’ he said calmly then indicated his collar and skirt. ‘I’m training to be a priest.’

Arthur raised his eyebrow and nodded sagely, as if conferring his approval on a good career choice.

‘Follow me.’

Matthew followed him down stairs covered in a plush purple carpet until they reached a long, dark room filled with the quiet murmur of lunchtime drinking.

‘Hang on here,’ the gangster said then, seeming to think again, turned to Matthew and rather formally held out his hand, saying, ‘I’m Arthur… erm… Father.’

Matthew took it and said, ‘Just Matthew. Not a priest yet.’

Arthur seemed confused by this assertion, as did a few of the customers who, Matthew noticed, were looking over at him. The bloody soutane. Matthew didn’t want to be seen going up to the long bar. He would be less conspicuous sitting down, so took a low seat near the stage. Almost as soon as he did his ears were assaulted with loud music, ‘Louie, louie – whoa baby…’, the lights came on with a loud snap then, directly in front of his face, from behind a tinsel curtain, a girl emerged wearing a minuscule gold bikini. As she snaked around the stage, frantically shaking her hips, the bikini was revealed to be nothing more than a handful of lightly strung beads, which flicked away from her body revealing absolutely everything. Matthew did not know where to look. Nudity did not bother him. If you were shocked by the human form, you had no business studying renaissance art. What did bother him was being seen dressed as a priest at a strip show. It was already a source of great amusement to the men behind him.

‘Go on, padre!’ he heard somebody shout behind him. ‘Show ’er what you’ve got under that frock!’

He turned around to give the men a good-humoured smile, shaking his hand to indicate he wasn’t here for the stripper, but as he did he felt himself being jerked back by the shoulder.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’

Noreen.

‘I could ask you the same question.’

‘Don’t be such a sanctimonious goshawk. I’m working. Something you’ve never done a day of in your life.’

‘At least I’m not hanging out with lowlifes in some dirty den of iniquity.’

‘Try telling that to the lads.’ She gave her customers a cheery wave. ‘They’re getting a great kick out of you.’

‘That’s not my fault.’ Even though he was the good one, the moral one, the priest for goodness sake, somehow Noreen was taking the moral high ground.

‘Coming in here dressed up like that. They think you’re part of the show! I’m trying this new girl out – seeing if we can bring a bit of class into the lunchtime strip – and you’re making a mockery out of it!’ Then she prodded him, hard, in the top of his arm and said, ‘Come on. Up with you!’ When Matthew stood up the whole room cheered, and Noreen gave a little bow and a flourish of her hand before handing him over to Arthur, who had been standing on guard ever since she’d admonished him for letting her stupid brother cross the threshold at all.

‘Take him out back while I calm this lot down.’

Arthur escorted him to an empty store room where he sat on a barrel and waited for his sister to come and tear strips off him.

She did not disappoint.

‘Mam and Da are really worried about you,’ Matthew said.

‘They’re in their hole. Da just wants me to go home and run the business for him so he can swan off and play golf, or whatever. Failing that, he wants to get you back in touch with Lara so that you’ll give up this stupid priest business then go home and, presumably, also try to make yourself useful.’

‘But Mammy…’

Even as he said it, Matthew could hear how whiney and pathetic it sounded. A nancy boy. That’s what his father called him.

Noreen softened. Their mother was a good woman. But not strong.

‘Mammy is fine,’ she said. ‘It’s better she doesn’t know where I’m working. I’ll write to Da tonight and tell him I’m working in an Irish bar. You tell him you saw me and that I’m fine. Tell him I’m busy making a small fortune for a landlord from Longford. That will get his goat and put him so high up on his horse he won’t bother us again for a while.’

‘What about Lara?’

‘What about her?’

‘I should see her…’

‘Why?’

‘To say sorry.’

‘For what? Breaking her heart? Deciding you’d prefer to be a stupid priest than be with her? She’s over you, Matt, or, at least, she’s getting over you.’

Noreen thought about Lara sneaking out of Coleman’s office. Noreen had expected, or rather hoped, Lara would tell her about their encounter afterwards. Fill her in on the gory details of her new romance, but she didn’t. Whatever Lara’s reason – guilt, embarrassment – Noreen was hurt by her silence. It seemed her old friend was becoming as secretive as their strange flatmate, Annie. Was it a good idea for Lara to see Matthew while she was starting a fledgling romance with Coleman? Probably not. But then, that wasn’t Lara’s call because, if she wasn’t going to tell Noreen what was going on with her, then there was no need for Noreen to fill her in on her brother’s sudden appearance.

‘Leave her alone, Matthew. You turning up on her suddenly would just upset the applecart.’

‘I need to make amends.’

‘Not always about what you need, brother dear. You’re a priest now – you’re supposed to think about what other people need. Lara’s moved on.’ Shuffling him towards the door she added, ‘Speaking of which, you need to move along yourself now. This shift won’t manage itself and I don’t want those boys upsetting the new stripper – erm, dancer.’

As Noreen walked Matthew to the door she felt a pang of pity for her poor brother. In his seminarian dress he looked out of kilter – not just with the seedy environs of Chevrons, but with himself. While Noreen had the confident bluff of Frank in her bones Matthew had always been less certain of himself and his place in the world. He would make a terrible priest, and the last thing the world needed was more terrible priests. She hoped he wouldn’t make it that far. That he might give this priest business up before it gave up on him. As she gently encouraged him out onto the Kings Road, although he didn’t say anything, she could sense he was vulnerable and lost and Noreen felt as if she was throwing him to a nest of vipers. At the door, she pulled him back and kissed him, assuring him that she would write to their parents and promised to contact him at the seminary to meet up again before too long. Unseen, from the bottom of the stairs, Arthur witnessed their tender moment, and a lump caught in his throat.

Back in the bustle of the Kings Road, Matthew did not have to be back in the seminary until evening prayer. He had expected that Noreen and Lara would keep him busy for the whole afternoon. Certainly, at the very least, cook him his dinner. Hungry, Matthew wandered into a small, working man’s cafe across the road from the club, feeling a little hard done by that his sister hadn’t dropped everything to feed him.

Lost in resentment he sat by the window and picked up the plastic covered menu. He had barely begun to read it when he sensed the waitress standing over his shoulder. Another woman come to annoy him.

‘I’m not ready yet,’ he snapped.

‘In a minute, so.’

Something in the soft, smooth timbre of her voice, the barest hint of an Irish accent, caused him to turn around. When he saw her, a feeling came over him like nothing he had ever experienced before. Looking at the girl’s face Matthew felt as if he was looking into every painting he had ever admired, all at once. She was every white-skinned, crimson-haired maiden he had ever fallen in love with. In an instant he relived those stunned moments when he first stood in the National Gallery gazing at the sublime originals of his painter heroes, Rubens, Raphael, astonished by their ability to capture the mysterious beauty of women onto canvas. This feeling, he realised at the time, was the closest he’d ever been to falling in love. Now, this feeling was back but it was happening with a real woman. Although, in some sense, her beauty was so otherworldly Matthew felt as if he might be gazing at an illusion, the feeling he had ran deeper than for her beauty alone. Although she was a complete stranger to him, Matthew felt he knew her. He instinctively understood things about her that he knew were true. Even though he had no evidence whatsoever to suggest it, he could see in her eyes that she was vulnerable. She had been hurt. Without her saying a word, he could see in her beautiful eyes that she was carrying something that did not belong to her. It was a lifetime in a moment; this was the world standing still.

Matthew was at a loss for words but he couldn’t let her go so he said, ‘Erm, mixed grill please.’

‘Are you sure?’ she said, writing his order down. ‘It’ll be about twenty minutes – to make sure the steak is well done.’ Then she smiled.

Even though he was sitting down, Matthew felt his insides collapse. Unable to speak, he nodded in reply and she went off to the kitchen with his order. Matthew pinched himself for being so useless, then braced himself for the longest twenty minutes of his life.