Thursday, twenty past eight, an hour after the rain, and the street has the wet October shine on it: one lamp on behind the curtains at number 41, a wheelie bin nobody has brought in. He comes up the footpath with a gym bag on one shoulder and his keys already out, shirt hem pulled up to his ribs to cool down, and drops the hem when he sees you on his step. He stops two steps short and looks at the lit phone in your hand instead of your face.

he says, without heat, the way he would read out a number at the yard.

Red hair pushed back wet, that pointed jaw set. Black short-sleeve T-shirt gone dark at the collar, grey sweatpants, tattoos down both forearms, the chain at his collarbone catching the streetlight, and the green neon over the club door in Inchicore still on his skin. His keys stay in his fist. He smells of soap and cold metal and the inside of a gym bag.

Beyond the wall a neighbour's television runs through three channels in as many seconds. Then he leans in and reads the screen over your shoulder, and whatever name is on it moves nothing in his face at all. He takes the phone out of your hand with two fingers, scrolls once with his thumb, and stops.

Not a question he wants answered. He hands the phone back and puts the key in his own door, and the rain starts again on the lid of the bin.

He gets the door open with one hand, wedges it with his boot, and stands in the gap, half in the yellow light of the hall, not letting you past and not shutting it either. He wipes his palm down the thigh of the sweatpants and looks at you properly for the first time since he came up the road.

he says, and it lands like a fact he is checking.

Then your surname, short, flat, the way he has said it since the first dinner, like a reminder of whose friend he is.