The Fitzgeralds were five.

Tammy and Mícheál – Optima and Finn’s Mam and Pop – met in college, in Yale. She already had a kid then, Camille. He was staying with Tammy’s parents in their Pacific coast mussel farm. Pop – Mícheál – was on a sailing scholarship. He was a brilliant lad from a cluster of islands on the west coast known as Na n-Oileán. They graduated, scooped up Camille and moved to Ireland, and had two more kids over the years, Optima and Finn.

Camille’s dad had wandered off somewhere.

Ten years later, now wasn’t a good time for a disaster. Camille had been working in Bordeaux for a couple of years, staying with a vineyard family to learn the wine trade.

Mam – Tammy – was in Arizona this week, attending one of those giant ecological conferences that never seemed to do much except produce reports wailing about the glaciers and demanding the end of private cars.

Pop – Mícheál – was helping people somewhere in Africa – Optima couldn’t remember where – to set up a water piping system. They were making the baked clay water pipes themselves and routing them to a series of villages. Finn had often gone with him on these gigs, but this time he’d come down with the newest Covid a month ago, on the day they were to travel.

Then there were some grandparents, but… it’s complicated. So it was just Finn and Optima.

Now, Optima led Finn back towards the house. They went in the back door. Any windows she hadn’t had time to open had been blown out, and the door from the kitchen into the hall hung at an angle and was blackened and hissing. The floors were flowing with water, and when she opened the toilet door a wave came out at her. “Eww!” She jumped out of the way. “You want to stay here while I go and look for Des?”

“No way!” said Finn. “We stay together.”

“Where do we find him?”

He shrugged. “Na n-Oileán? How are we going to get to the west? It’s a few hours on the train and bus, but…” He shrugged.

“Well, you’re calm enough!”

Finn rooted through the shoes in the shoe cupboard in the living room. The sneakers were gone, leaving a couple of shreds of suede and canvas and two sad rubber soles. But there was a pair of his school uniform leather shoes, stuffed with balled-up wool socks. Finn put them on.

Optima sat down on the couch, feeling strangely normal here, and drummed her fingers on the table. “Wasn’t Des sailing around the coast? I thought he was meant to be here in a few days?”

“We can but look. Are you going to make yourself decent?”

Optima realised she was now wearing a pair of ancient jeans, but nothing on top. She ran up the stairs, keeping to the wall side of the loose and creaking steps, and went into her parents’ room. She breathed in the faint scent of her mother’s perfume. The old mahogany chest of drawers was intact. She found a heavy linen shirt and a wool jacket and some thick sandals and pulled them on. “Let’s go.”

The road was empty. Most people around here drove to work. Or maybe it was because people were staying in until they understood what was happening.

They went down the hill towards the harbour, but as they turned the corner at the castle, they stopped, baffled. The bay below should have been full of boats, but the sea was empty, except for some floating debris and two or three rowboats.

Things are coming to pieces. Shreds of curtains hanging at windows, streets empty - or not: there’s an old woman, apparently crazy, walking down the middle of the street sobbing in fear. She was holding her hands over her eyes, blood pouring out between her fingers.

“I don’t like this.” Finn’s voice was faint. “This is bad.”

Always the master of understatement.

Then they heard the mob.

Optima grabbed Finn’s elbow and dragged him into a deep doorway beside a shop.

A mass of people ran along the street, howling and roaring. Some of them had hurleys and baseball bats and sticks. In front of them was Mohammed from the corner shop by the pier, running for his life.

“We’ve got to help him!” Optima stepped forward.

Finn dragged her back. “Would you ever have sense?” he hissed.

But she got away and raced down. Mohammed was slowing, his muscles stiff from terror. Optima ran with the crowd, but she was fresh and she was fast. She grabbed Mohammed by the wrist and ran with him, turning down to the pier and along it. She dragged him along the pier and off the end. They disappeared.

The mob came to a ragged halt, staring after them.

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Finn stood alone, staring out into the harbour. It should be filled with sailboats and dinghies, sometimes a millionaireish yacht. But now there were just two wooden rowboats floating free, and in the distance Optima swimming strongly, towing Mohammed as she went.

***

Across the city, the Friday market in Cumberland Street was going strong.

“All the women are looking for them,” Mikey Connors says, as a blondie woman runs the drawers in and out. The woman had no intention of buying, Mikey Connors knew, but for entertainment alone he’d make her do it.

“All respect, ma’am, it will be lovely in your kitchen,” he said, keeping an eye sideways to make sure Bridgie was watching out for the shades. She was. Her gold-red curls shone in the un as she pretended to flirt with Mick Flynn’s son, but casting a glance up and down the cross road so that any patrol car or sneaking bike cop wouldn’t be missed.

“What do you know about the kitchen I have?” the woman said, laughing.

Mikey had her well scoped already, but he gave a long bold look up and down at her nicely fed hips and her expensive shoes – why do women wear them things, they must be crippled? – and her blondie hair all touched up recent. “Granite worktops, am I right? Kick-toe drawers, and no kettle, but ice water from the fridge and boiling water from the wall?”

Her smile faded momentarily – had he gone a bit far? “You’re a woman of taste. Look at this! A refrigerator drawer. On fecking trend (excuse my language, ma’am).” Young Oisín had read about these things in Elle Decoration and told his da, and Mikey had bought a couple of dozen off a lorry transiting and was feeding them gradually into the market. “And I’d say you’re a lady, ma’am, who’d appreciate the style of this.”

He slid it out of its box to show her the raw wood finish. Her eyes widened, and he saw the good sign: her hand went to the chain of her Loewe Goya shoulder bag and slid down.

She stopped her hand right there. “How much?” In a flat tone that said you’re not going to fool me, mister, I know you Travellers and your coaxing cheating ways.

Mikey took his time. He opened out the two drawers, stroking the birchwood, showing the glossy red plastic interior. Ann-Marie had the same at home, but he wouldn’t be telling this nice lady that. Ann-Marie had gone mad for the scarlet interior, throwing in bags of frozen peas and frozen spinach and frozen beans to see the contrast of their fresh green with the maw of the drawer, and turned around and embraced him, laying her cheek against the hollow of his shoulder while he went “Ah, now!”

“This item, ma’am, would cost you a round thousand pound if you bought it at its full retail price,” he told the lady. He was lying, and it didn’t hurt his conscience one bit. The drawers marketed for three thousand dollars plus spare change. Mikey had taken away the packaging and the instruction booklet, Oisín had carved out the serial number and painted it over. Anything he got for this would be straight profit.

“You’re joking,” she said.

It was then that he heard the sound of horseshoes and Oisín came around the corner in the sulky, with the new mare in harness. Bridgie went over to him and remonstrated – he’d promised not to bring the rig into town. Mikey could hear Oisín’s clear young bass saying “She’s a lovely pace, I had to show it off…” and Bridgie “You’ll draw down the shades on us, you big eejit.”

“I am not,” Mikey said to the lady. “But what I will ask of you is nothing like that. Nothing like it!” He took a good look at her and priced her up from shoes to hairstyle. He gave her a generous smile. “What would you offer me for this, ma’am?”

Her eyes switched quickly back and forth. “What makes you think I want to make an offer?”

“Ah, go on,” said Mikey. “Just for the abstract, like.”

She tapped her foot. “I’m not getting any guarantee.”

“I’m here every single Friday, and if I’m not then one of the family will be here. But if you want to buy something smaller and test the guarantee…” He took the drawer fridge away from her and put it to the side of the folding table, and brought up a steel pressure cooker.

Her eyes kept going back to the scarlet mouth of the drawer, but a foot was tapping. He was losing her.

“There, ma’am, you see that man there? He bought a tree-felling saw from me two years ago. Mr Farrell,” he called, and the man browsing the books three stalls away turned around.

“Mikey! There you are!”

“How’s that saw going for you, Mr Farrell?”

The man sauntered over. “Do you have any more like it? I’m bringing my nephew into the business…”

“Next week for sure.”

“I’ll be here so.” The man nodded to him and went back to the book stall.

“Three hundred euros,” the woman said. “Seven-fifty,” said Mikey. They started bargaining seriously. Mikey wanted to be out of here before any enquiring detectives turned up on their weekly round of the market, or at least to have more innocent-looking goods on his stall, so he finally let the drawer fridge go for five hundred.

He was walking her gallantly to her car when a heavy hand grasped his shoulder, and a familiar voice said, “Mikey Connors. At it again.”

“There you are, Detective Murphy,” he said in a tone of resignation. At the end of the road, Bridgie was sliding away around the corner. Good, she’s clear.

“May I introduce my colleague, Detective Barton?” said the big solid man in his scruffy plainclothes, and the blondie woman grinned at him. She reached into her handbag and stopped, frowning. “Forgot to pack my handcuffs, have you got yours, Jim?”

“I have not, Celine, but I have these.” Detective Murphy pulled out a handful of cable ties. “I’ll have that, thank you, that’s evidence,” and he took the drawer fridge from Mikey. “Very nice indeed! Where did this come from?”

“Ah, you know yourself,” said Mikey, as the woman whipped one arm behind his back, then the other, and pulled the zip tie too tight on his wrists. He cursed mentally; he could just hear that said in court: “The accused answered, ‘Ah, you know yourself’ when asked where he had got the…”

They started walking him along the road towards Sean MacDermott Street. Then Murphy staggered backwards, and Mikey felt the cable tie fall from his wrist.

“Oh, you’re a decent beor,” he said to Detective Barton, but then saw from her expression that she had not meant to free him. He ran. Murphy threw down the drawer fridge – Mikey saw as the drawers lurched open that the red interior had somehow disappeared – and chased him.

Mikey made it to the corner and ran straight into an old woman on a cargo bike. “Sorry, ma’am!” and he ran the way she was going.

She cycled fast beside him. The cargo box was empty. Without a look back, he jumped in.

“Get down, you eejit, and pull that rug over you,” the old woman said.

He curled up, pulled the plaid wool rug over him and cringed in the bottom of the box. Behind, he could hear baffled shouts. He felt the bike bump up on the island before Killarney Street, then turn. He started to sit up. “Stay down,” the woman said. She kept pedalling and he lay in the bottom of the box like a big baby in his cradle.