Back in July he went to the anniversary Mass for Marianne’s father. The church in town was small, smelling of rain and incense, with stained-glass panels in the windows. He and Lorraine never went to Mass, he’d only been in there for funerals before. He saw Marianne in the vestibule when he arrived. She looked like a piece of religious art. It was so much more painful to look at her than anyone had warned him it would be, and he wanted to do something terrible, like set himself on fire or drive his car into a tree. He always reflexively imagined ways to cause himself extreme injury when he was distressed. It seemed to soothe him briefly, the act of imagining a much worse and more totalising pain than the one he really felt, maybe just the cognitive energy it required, the momentary break in his train of thought, but afterwards he would only feel worse.

That night, after Marianne went back to Dublin, he went out drinking with some people from school, to Kelleher’s first, and then McGowan’s, and then that awful nightclub Phantom around the back of the hotel. No one was around that he had ever been really close with, and after a few drinks he became aware that he wasn’t there to socialise anyway, he was just there to drink himself into a kind of sedated non-consciousness. He withdrew from the conversation gradually and focused on consuming as much alcohol as he could without passing out, not even laughing along with the jokes, not even listening.

It was in Phantom that they met Paula Neary, their old Economics teacher. By then Connell was so drunk that his vision was misaligned, and beside every solid object he could see another version of the object, like a ghost. Paula bought them all shots of tequila. She was wearing a black dress and a silver pendant. He licked a line of salt off the back of his own hand and saw the ghostly other of her necklace, a faint white trace on her shoulder. When she looked at him she did not have two eyes, but several, and they moved around exotically in the air, like jewels. He started laughing about it, and she leaned in close with her breath on his face to ask him what was so funny.

He doesn’t remember how he got back to her house, whether they walked or took a taxi, he still doesn’t know. The place had that strange unfurnished cleanliness that lonely houses sometimes have. She seemed like a person with no hobbies: no bookcases, no musical instruments. What do you do with yourself at the weekends, he remembers slurring. I go out and have fun, she said. This struck him even at the time as deeply depressing. She poured them both glasses of wine. Connell sat on the leather sofa and drank the wine for something to do with his hands.

How is the football team looking this year? he said.

It’s not the same without you, said Paula.

She sat beside him on the couch. Her dress had slipped down slightly, exposing a mole over her right breast. He could have fucked her back when he was in school. People joked about it, but they would have been shocked if it had really happened, they would have been scared. They would have thought his shyness masked something steely and frightening.

Best years of your life, she said.

What?

Best years of your life, secondary school.

He tried to laugh, and it came out very goofy and nervous. I don’t know, he said. That’s a sad thought if that’s true.

She started to kiss him then. This seemed like a strange thing to happen to him, unpleasant on the surface level, but also interesting in a way, as if his life was taking a new direction. Her mouth tasted sour like tequila. Briefly he wondered if it was legal for her to kiss him, and he concluded it must be, he couldn’t think of a reason why it wouldn’t be, and yet it felt substantially wrong. Every time he pulled away from her she seemed to follow him forward, so that he found himself puzzled about the physics of what was going on, and he was no longer sure whether he was sitting upright on the sofa or reclining backwards against the arm. As an experiment he tried to sit up, which confirmed he was in fact sitting up already, and the small red light which he thought might have been on the ceiling above him was just a standby light on the stereo system across the room.

Back in school Miss Neary had made him feel so uncomfortable. But was he mastering that discomfort now by letting her kiss him on the sofa in her living room, or just succumbing to it? He’d hardly had time to formulate this question when she started unbuttoning his jeans. In a panic he tried to push her hand away, but with such an ineffectual gesture that she appeared to think he was helping her. She got the top button undone and he told her that he was really drunk, and maybe they should stop. She put her hand inside the waistband of his underwear and said it was okay, she didn’t mind. He thought he would probably black out then, but he found he couldn’t. He wished he could have. He heard Paula saying: You’re so hard. That was an especially insane thing for her to say, because he actually wasn’t.

I’m going to get sick, he said.

She jerked back then, pulling her dress after her, and he took the opportunity to stand up from the sofa and button his jeans back up. Cautiously she asked if he was okay. When he looked at her he could make out two separate Paulas sitting on the couch, so clearly delineated that it was no longer obvious which was the real Paula and which the ghost. Sorry, he said. He woke up the next day fully clothed on the floor of his living room. He still has no idea how he made it home.

He must be insecure about something, says Marianne now. I don’t know what. Maybe he’d like to be more cerebral.

Maybe he just has good self-esteem.

No, definitely not that. He’s …

Her eyes flick back and forth quickly. When she does this, she looks like an expert mathematician performing calculations in her head. She sets the coffee cup back in the saucer.

He’s what? says Connell.

He’s a sadist.

Connell stares at her across the table, simply allowing his face to express the alarm he feels at this remark, and she gives a cute little smile. She twists her cup around on the saucer.

Are you serious? says Connell.

Well, he likes to beat me up. Just during sex, that is. Not during arguments.

She laughs, a stupid laugh that doesn’t suit her. Connell’s visual field shudders violently for a second, like the beginning of a gigantic migraine, and he lifts a hand to his forehead. He realises he is scared. Around Marianne he often feels somehow innocent, though really he’s a lot more sexually experienced than she is.

And you’re into that, are you? he says.

She shrugs. Her cigarette is burning out in the ashtray. She picks it up quickly and drags on it before stubbing it out.

I don’t know, she says. I don’t know if I really like it.

Why do you let him do it, then?

It was my idea.

Connell picks up his cup and takes a large mouthful of very hot coffee, wanting to do something efficient with his hands. When he replaces the cup it splashes up and spills over into the saucer.

What do you mean? he says.

It was my idea, that I wanted to submit to him. It’s difficult to explain.

Well, go on and try if you want. I’m interested.

She laughs again now. It’s going to make you feel very awkward, she says.

Okay.

She looks at him, maybe to see if he’s joking, and then she lifts her chin at an angle, and he knows she won’t back down from telling him about it, because that would be giving in to something she doesn’t believe about herself.

It’s not that I get off on being degraded as such, she says. I just like to know that I would degrade myself for someone if they wanted me to. Does that make sense? I don’t know if it does, I’ve been thinking about it. It’s about the dynamic, more than what actually happens. Anyway I suggested it to him, that I could try being more submissive. And it turns out he likes to beat me up.

Connell starts coughing. Marianne picks a small wooden coffee-stirrer out of a jar on the table and starts twisting it in her fingers. He waits for the coughing to subside and then says: What does he do to you?

Oh, I don’t know, she says. He hits me with a belt sometimes. He likes choking me, things like that.

Right.

I mean, I don’t enjoy it. But then, you’re not really submitting to someone if you only submit to things you enjoy.

Have you always had these ideas? Connell says.

She gives him a look. He feels like the fear has consumed him and turned him into something else now, like he has passed through the fear, and looking at her is like swimming towards her across a strip of water. He picks up the cigarette packet and looks into it. His teeth start chattering and he puts a cigarette on his lower lip and lights it. Marianne is the only one who ever triggers these feelings in him, the strange dissociative feeling, like he’s drowning and time doesn’t exist properly anymore.

I don’t want you to think Jamie’s a horrible guy, she says.

He sounds like one.

He’s not really.

Connell drags on the cigarette and then lets his eyes half-close for a second. The sun is very warm, and he can sense Marianne’s body close to him, and the mouthful of smoke, and the bitter aftertaste of coffee.

Maybe I want to be treated badly, she says. I don’t know. Sometimes I think I deserve bad things because I’m a bad person.

He exhales. In the spring he would sometimes wake up at night beside Marianne, and if she was awake too they would move into each other’s arms until he could feel himself inside her. He didn’t have to say anything, except to ask her if it was alright, and she always said it was. Nothing else in his life compared to what he felt then. Often he wished he could fall asleep inside her body. It was something he could never have with anyone else, and he would never want to. Afterwards they’d just go back to sleep in each other’s arms, without speaking.

You never said any of this to me, he says. When we were …

It was different with you. We were, you know. Things were different.

She twists the little strip of wood with both hands and then releases it on one side so it recoils from her fingers.

Should I be feeling insulted? he says.

No. If you want to hear the simplest explanation, I’ll tell you.

Well, is it a lie?

No, she says.

She pauses. Carefully she sets down the wooden coffee-stirrer. She has no props now, and reaches to touch her hair instead.

I didn’t need to play any games with you, she says. It was real. With Jamie it’s like I’m acting a part, I just pretend to feel that way, like I’m in his power. But with you that really was the dynamic, I actually had those feelings, I would have done anything you wanted me to. Now, you see, you think I’m a bad girlfriend. I’m being disloyal. Who wouldn’t want to beat me up?

She covers her eyes with her hand. She’s smiling, a tired and self-hating smile. He wipes the palms of his hands on his lap.

I wouldn’t, he says. Maybe I’m kind of unfashionable in that way.

She moves her hand away and looks at him, the same smile, and her lips still look dry.

I hope we can always take each other’s sides, she says. It’s very comforting for me.

Well, that’s good.

She looks at him then, like she’s seeing him for the first time since they sat down together.

Anyway, she says. How are you?

He knows the question is meant honestly. He’s not someone who feels comfortable confiding in others, or demanding things from them. He needs Marianne for this reason. This fact strikes him newly. Marianne is someone he can ask things of. Even though there are certain difficulties and resentments in their relationship, the relationship carries on. This seems remarkable to him now, and almost moving.

Something kind of weird happened to me in the summer, he said. Can I tell you about it?