Paul was dreaming. Stretched out on the sofa, in his mind he was exactly where he didn’t want to be—in Belfast, in 1976 and on that same street in the Republican Markets section of town. Aidan was beside him, bundled in a duffle coat.
“Are you goin’ in or not?” Aidan asked, nodding impatiently toward the music shop door.
Paul stared at his friend, in wonder at the sight of his clean-cut looks, his familiar face, even that mohair jumper he’d borrowed so many times before. You’re alive. “Yeah,” Paul said in the dream, “but, em, give me the money fer the cigarettes first.”
Aidan scowled.
Paul knew he shouldn’t have asked for that money, not because Aidan disapproved of smoking, but rather because of what Paul intended the cigs for—clocking girls, looking cool. Aidan hated poseurs. Still he turned over the money to Paul, shook his head with an obvious frown. “You don’t even know how t’smoke the bloody things.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Paul said. “Look, I’ll only be a moment. See if they’ve got a recording of that Mendelssohn song you were playin’ the other day.”
“The concerto?”
“Yeah, that’s the one,” and stepping into the traffic, Paul hardly glanced back as he crossed the street for the public house.
He should have glanced back. In the dream, he might have, catching one last glimpse of Aidan’s expression, that mop of blond hair, even his brusque way of walking which belied Aidan’s natural inclination for shyness…but he didn’t. Feeling the dread building in his heart, Paul wrestled with himself there on the sofa. He tried to wake himself out of the dream. Turn around, he thought, bloody hell go after him, don’t let him go in that record shop alone.
But Paul didn’t turn around. Just as he had on that fateful afternoon, he went in the pub, asked for the cigs. He picked up his change, and in the midst of it, in that horrible moment when the explosion went off, Paul’s sixteen-year-old ears filled with the sounds—the bomb blast roar, the shop fronts shattering, metal shards and pavement raining down.
With a jump, he woke up. His drawing room, still littered with textbooks and newspapers, was quiet, cold. No army units. No bombs.
No Aidan, he thought, rubbing his eyes.
Forcing himself to sit up, he focused his attention on the view of Bray Head outside his window. He tried to numb his thoughts, but each time he did, image after image coursed through his mind—Aidan on the beach, Aidan cooking mint potatoes at two in the morning. As Paul fought the pain, he told himself wearily, Don’t start this. Don’t even go there or you’ll be bashing your head through the walls again, won’t you?
Putting everyone through that a second time wouldn’t win points with the lads, he knew. The gardaí coming, Trevor explaining his fit to the barman and the woman being called to fetch him home…what would Paul do this year, he wondered? Pick a fight and get himself killed? How best to celebrate the anniversary of Aidan’s death?