Killorglin summer fair: nobody knew where their marbles were and everybody needed a haircut. “Here we go!” shouted Gary, removing the T-shirt that had been temporarily reinstated for the drive and using it to gesticulate wildly as he insisted everybody “follow me to base camp”. This rather disappointingly turned out to be an unremarkable “U” of tents pitched, Eoin’s nose told him, too close to the toilets. Gary introduced Eoin as The Kid, which was a nickname he’d decided upon at some point during the drive. “Kid, this is French Andy, he’s Belgian”, he’d say. Or “Johnny the Tooth, let me introduce The Kid.” And The Kid, Eoin, smiled and nodded: “hello”; “all right”; “how’s it going?” “He’s run away from home,” Gary said proudly, “so we’ve taken him under our wings.” Before the Corsa had left Holyhead Jules insisted that Eoin call his parents. She’d walked over to the phone box with him, put the 50p in the slot and waited until someone had answered. If the purpose of the phone call was to make Eoin’s parents feel better about their son absconding, then it would have to go down as a failure. His mum started by shouting, calmed down a bit, then ended by crying, before putting his dad (drunk) and Dillon (impressed) on to “talk some sense into him”. Eoin hung up feeling both homesick and genuinely nauseous. He had that churn-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach feeling that comes from having done something you know to be incontrovertibly wrong. But he also felt something else: a force more subtle, but equally powerful. Having come so far wasn’t he obliged to see this through? If you went over the top there was an expectation that you’d use your gun, wasn’t there? Warm cider clouded his brain. He’d drunk before – what teenager in Ballinasloe hadn’t – but never with such freedom, never mind encouragement. People were dancing to a song that seemed like it had been stuck on repeat for the last half an hour. Eoin stared. Jules had swapped her cigarettes for two orbs of fire which she swung rhythmically on their chains. Perspiration had begun to form on her brow with the concentration – and was that a bead running down her chest, plunging into the depths of the neon bikini? “Fair play, Kid!” shouted Gary, his head bobbing violently to a beat twice as fast as anyone else’s. “You’ve taken arms against a sea of troubles, know what I mean? You get an “A” for effort for that.” Eoin didn’t know what he meant; didn’t care. The alcohol had dulled