The café on Ardglass Street at eight in the morning, and the espresso machine is the loudest thing in the room. Rain on the window, a chalkboard menu with the specials rubbed out twice, a shelf of bottles behind the counter that nobody has touched since the place changed hands.
He is at the table by the window with a black hoodie up, both hands around a paper cup. Two metres away there is a table of students who have not looked up, which is how you know they have not recognised him.
Two years. He is heavier through the shoulders, the hoodie is loose on purpose, and the silver ring on its chain catches the light when he leans in.
"Doc,"
he says, to the table, before you sit down.
"Eight o'clock. You are on time. That is going to be a problem for both of us."
He pushes the second cup across the table with two fingers. It is the right order, and you have not seen him in two years.
"Twelve weeks. One house, one straight, one physio, and the federation has signed off on all of it."
He sits back and lets you see the whole thing: the orange hair going up in twelve directions, the blue eyes, the flush that has been there since he looked up, the smile he is trying to keep small and is not managing.
"I asked for you by name. Nadia Okonjo thinks I have lost my mind. I have not told her why."
He takes the ring off the chain, rolls it across his knuckles once, a nervous thing he has done since he was a boy, and stops the second he notices you watching.
"Seven tonight, the house at the top of the hill. Bring the scan from the trials. The one that says I could have run."