And I loved some essential thing too; the sense of him I carried around with me, which was confirmed each time I saw him, or a few strange seconds later. We knew each other. Our real life was in some shared head space; our bodies were just the places we used to play. Maybe that’s the way lovers should be – not these besotted, fuck-witted strangers that are myself and Seán, these actors in a bare room.

Anyway. Before our lives became a desolation of boredom, rage and betrayal, I loved Seán. I mean, Conor.

Before our lives became a desolation of boredom, rage and all the rest of it, I loved Conor Shiels, whose heart was steady, and whose body was so solid and warm.

The weekend after contracts were exchanged, we went into the unfinished house and looked around. Then we sat on the concrete floor and held hands.

‘Listen,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘Listen to the money.’

The place was going up by seventy-five euro a day, he said, which was – he did the calculations under flickering eyelids – about five cents a minute. Which didn’t seem like much, I thought. Which seemed almost piffling, after all we had been through. Still, you could almost feel it, a pushing in the walls; the toaster would pop out fivers, the wood of the new-laid floors would squeeze out paper money and start to flower.

And, for some reason, we were terrified.

Don’t tell me otherwise.

The house fitted Lego-like with its neighbour, which had the basement and split the middle floor, and this threw me a bit, the fact that it was only half a house until you went upstairs. It was like the place had suffered a stroke.

Not that this was a problem, or at least not a problem you could identify. I just hadn’t expected it. And I still dream about this house, about walking up those steps and opening the front door.

The day we moved in, Conor was inside in among the boxes, sitting at his laptop like a demented organist, cursing the internet connection.