'Mike!'� An excited six-year-old grabs me by the right wrist and drags me into the living room.
'Mummy, Mike's here!'�
Jo looks around and gives me the warmest smile I have seen in a long time. She has the look of a woman born to run a household of two lively children and a husband with an experimental approach to DIY.
'Hi, Mike,'� she says with a sad smile. Then she just wraps me up in a hug. 'Pat told me about Manny. I'm very sorry.'�
I return the hug; the hug of a good friend. 'Thanks Jo, I'm still getting my head around it.'�
'Pat's outside.'�
'Thanks. Come on Jimmy let's go and see Daddy.'� Jimmy needs no urging and drags me towards the French doors.

Pat McGrath is a typical Irishman in many ways, from his stocky build to his
gruff honesty. He's quick to anger and quick to forgive. Our friendship goes back five years in time and dozens of years in shared experiences. When he hears Jimmy calling out he puts his spade down straight away, walks over, looks me in the eye and shakes my hand.

'How are you mate?'�

I can feel that pressure in my cheekbones again, and I'm not sure it's gonna go away this time. I nod, clenching my jaw. 'Not so bad, mate'�'�

He then wraps me in a hug that demolishes the barriers.

'Don't hold em back, mate.'�

I can't say anything. For 30 seconds I am paralysed with what can only be the first real shivers and tears of the genuine grief. When that half minute expires, I let Pat go.

'Come in mate; have a beer.'�

We sit in Pat's front room while Jo keeps Jimmy and their youngest, Steven, distracted upstairs. Jimmy isn't happy and is kicking up a fuss.

'He's turning into a passionate little bugger. Like his old man,'� I say, as the yells of outrage float downstairs.

'A feisty paddy, you mean?'� Pat says with a grin, handing me a can of beer. 'I'm proud of the lad. How are you feeling about stuff?'�

'Messed up, mate. I thought I was over it. I dunno, it's been three years. But when I found out, especially the circumstances'� She died giving birth to their second baby. I had a premonition I'd lose her like that. Fucking weird.'�

'I'll not speak ill of the dead, you know? But you don't owe her anything. She's family who will be mourning her too. She has a little boy?'�

'And now a little girl she never saw.'�

'Jaysus.'� He crosses himself, unconvinced Catholic though he is.

'I don't know what to feel. Sometimes I feel like she's been taken again, that I'm her man and they're my children. Stupid, huh?'�

'No, I don't think so mate. She was special to you but you got to mourn her for what she was, not for what she wasn't. It's not fair on yourself, mate.'�

'Yeah. I dunno,'� I take a swig of my beer and look at some point in the middle distance. 'I wish I could talk to her.'�

It's the helplessness that's getting to me, leaving me grasping for some way of dealing with it all. Even in my estrangement from Manny over the last few years I doubt that few have ever been as close to she as I had.

Probably only David. Just his name makes me feel unwell; a reaction rooted in a bitterness that should have gone. But I have to face him eventually, probably even speak to him. Up at the top of my brain I know his loss is light years beyond mine, but down in the deep, dark crevices I still hate him. Still begrudge him his place in Manny's heart.

I looked over at Pat. 'You fancy going to the pub?'�

-

We walk down to The Wheatsheaf, which has a few faces I recognise vaguely from my years living around here. Pat knows them, and exchanges quick pleasantries before we retreat to a booth with pints in hand.

'How are the kids?'�

'The kids are trouble, man. Jimmy got sent home from school last week. Punched a lad, so he did, for pushing his friend, Brian. That's my boy! I had to tell him off, but he was defending his pal, you know?'�

'He gets that from his old man,'� I say with a smile. Pat and I don't go way back, to when he grew up in the Garvachy Road area of Portadown, or when I ran barefoot around the rough and tumble rural landscape of south Auckland. Thousands of miles apart. But we go back enough to have stood up for each other when colleagues' quips went too far or one needed the other's advice. We go back enough in just the right ways.

'And how's Jo?'�

'Oh, you know. I love her like nothing on this earth; wouldn't be without her. And sometimes I want to strangle her.'�

I grin. It's a old joke between us. Women: Can't live with em'�. Pass the peanuts.

'So how are you getting on down there? Work going ok?'�

I ponder the question and sip my beer.

'It's alright. Still not completely happy with it, but it's better than six months ago. To be honest, I was just starting to find my feet with a lot of things'�'�

'This has hit you hard, huh?'�

'Yeah. Didn't really see it coming.'�

We both drink in silence for a few minutes, watching the flames of the gas fire.

'You have to mourn her. But you have to let her go too. Celebrate her.'�

'I know. I thought I already had let her go. Now I don't know when I will be ready to do it.'�

Pat leans forward, towards the fire. 'No. Well. I don't know mate. You're a good man, and she was a good woman. It's not easy losing someone and maybe it's worse this way. But whatever, you're here and living your life, not living hers for her.'�

Hours later, we stagger back and young Jimmy and Steven are long abed. Jo and Pat have to help me into mine. Once again, I sleep the hard, fast sleep of a drunken man.


Noise, energy and heat thunders around us. A nightclub at 2am, the drunks gone and the tinny tunes banished. This is the retreat of the hardcore. Where noise coils and curls, grabs the girls by the arse and punches at the chests of the men. The sickly smell of artificial smoke swirls with the tang of sweat. You dance or you go home, there is no in between.

And we dance. We are the eye of the storm, or she is and simply draws me into it. She knows music, has it coded into her soul; she dances with it and it dances with her. While others lose themselves in a drug haze she sinks into the music, and her body pulses, writhes and flexes to its tempo.

To me she is energy in human form and I am her chosen one. As other men bounce into her or try to lure her into dancing with them, she dismisses them effortlessly. A master matador toying with a dozen clumsy, callow bulls at once, but her eyes rarely stray from me. It is intoxicating being the focus of her energy.

I dance. I have never danced as I do with her. The noise is a drug, the beat a surging pulse in my arteries. I am being drawn into her world and it feels magnificent.

At some unknowable point the dance changes. The drive of the sound is channelling into new parts of us and it becomes about sex. The thump, the roar, the pulse, everything is crashing into the dark, lustful parts of us both, and we want each other. We dance closer, harder, our bodies sliding or crashing together. Her eyes are full of hunger, of the power of the music. She steps forward, grabs my face, then my hair at the nape of my neck and kisses me deep as I push myself closer, holding her slight frame tight to me.


My eyes snap open and I can still feel the nonexistent heat of her beside me. A ghost heat. Eventually, I sleep.

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