The prison nurse was the second person to mention counselling to Brendan. The first had been Lynsey, when she came to visit, and he'd wanted to grab her and shake her and ask her, What the fuck do you know? About me, about anything? Instead, he'd walked out of the visit. She'd meant well, Lynsey, and God knows she'd been through some shit herself; and she did know about him, didn't she? She knew what a fuck-up he was at any rate. But there was so much she didn't know, and that he could never talk to anyone about. Counselling? That was for other people.

So then the nurse, when he was patching Brendan up after the latest battering, trying to get him to talk about why this was happening.

"If you don't want to talk to me, there's people you can talk to."

Brendan had snorted.

"Talking about it's gonna stop it happening is it, son?"

The nurse had to admit that it wouldn't.

"But it might help how you deal with it. The anger, you know."

Fucking psychobabble. Brendan turned it down flat. The nurse had a nice arse, but he was talking out of it.

It was Brian who changed Brendan's mind. Brian was one of the prison officers, one of the handful who'd give you the time of day. He was older, seen it all, didn't have anything to prove, unlike some of the wardens Brendan's age or younger. That lot tended to let the uniform go to their heads, act the big man, square up to you; give you orders instead of asking. Brendan wanted to kill them.

Brian wasn't like that; he'd stop for a chat, ask how you were doing. He was from Galway, so they'd talk about Ireland. You'd think it would make things worse, talking about the hills and the ocean and the poetry while you were locked up inside these grey walls, but it didn't. It was like all those mournful songs that people sang together in wartime, Brendan supposed, about keeping the home fires burning, and meeting again: wrung your heart out but gave you strength.

It was when the bail hearing was coming up at last, that Brian told him an appointment had become available with a counsellor in the prison, and suggested he took up the offer.

"It'll look well for you when they're looking at your application. And if you get out this week, all you'll have is the one session: if it helps, all well and good. If not, well, at least you'll be out of your cell for an hour. What do you say, son?"

:::::::

Brendan was already agitated when he got there. There hadn't been an officer free to take him down to the treatment suite, so he'd paced his cell for forty minutes after the appointed time, then had to wait when he got there because they'd let the next guy have his slot. He was nervous that one of the prisoners who knew him would be there for some reason, and see him waiting; but the counsellor's office was right next to the medical room, so anyone who saw him would assume he was there about his injuries.

He knew that the counsellor was a woman, and if she was some young girl just out of university, he was going to walk. But she wasn't. She came out get him herself, and she was a lady of maybe fifty-five, sixty; smart-looking. Attractive, he'd say. Calm sort of voice.

She introduced herself as Vashti; told him she had a duty of confidentiality to prison patients just as she had on the outside; asked if she could call him Brendan, and offered him the choice of sitting in a chair opposite her desk, or lying on the couch. He chose the chair.

She'd been briefed. She had some notes on him, and knew about Silas Blissett's arrest.

Brendan told her he was innocent.

"Bet everyone tells you that."

"What anyone else says is not important in this room, Brendan. It's up to you if you'd like to talk about what brought you here."

"What else am I gonna talk about?" he snapped.

"Tell me how you're feeling, at this minute."

This was a bad idea. Feelings, for fucksake.

"Like I'm wasting your time."

"It's your time too, Brendan. We have almost an hour together. Perhaps I can suggest how you might be feeling, and you can tell me if I'm anywhere near?"

Nothing to lose. It was either this, or sit and wait outside to be taken back up to his cell. He shrugged.

"Try me."

"Thank you. Are you feeling angry?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I am, funnily enough." This woman didn't deserve his sarcasm, but he couldn't help it.

"And is that something that you feel quite often?"

"Yeah."

"Would you like to tell me about that?"

Tell her something she can latch onto, something that won't make you dig too deep.

"This girl. The one they reckon I... Rae, her name was. I lost my rag, didn't I, went after her. Scared her. That's why they... That's one of the reasons they pinned this on me. Because I lost my temper with Rae."

"And if you think back, Brendan, do you recognise what it was that triggered your anger that day?"

Fuck.

"She'd told... something to my son, that she had no business telling him." Brendan looked at his hands: they'd formed into fists, the knuckles white. He made himself unclench them.

"Can you tell me what it was that she told your son?"

Brendan looked at the ceiling, and waited for Vashti to ask something different, because this silence needed filling. Minutes passed. He was aware of his own heart beating, and the ticking of the clock on the wall. Someone had to break the silence or he would explode.

"I'm gay." Brendan looked at the counsellor, expecting – hoping, even – that he'd see his own disgust reflected in her reaction. "That's what Rae told my boy."

There was nothing: the woman looked unfazed.

"And why did that make you feel angry?"

"Why d'you think?" He waited, but of course she didn't answer, that wasn't how this thing worked. "It wasn't her place to tell him."

"Would you have liked to tell him yourself?"

"I didn't want... He didn't need to know. He's just a kid. A lad that age, he doesn't need to hear that his dad's a..." There was a glass of water on the desk. Brendan grabbed it and drained it.

"So, thinking about the anger you felt that day with Rae, would you say that you were angry with her, or angry about the thing itself?"

:::::::

It was a thing to make you angry. Brendan's dad was angry as he spat the words: queer, poof, pansy, like it was a thing that made them not men at all, but something other, lesser; untouchable in case they contaminated you. That's what Brendan would turn into if he didn't shape up, act like a man, pick himself up when his dad's punches floored him. It was the worst thing you could be, even though the kind of man who knocked his wife about and made his son afraid, and fucked off without a backward glance to let them fend for themselves: that wasn't the kind of man Brendan wanted grow up to be, either.

But Brendan shaped up, didn't he? He had to when he was shipped up to Belfast to his dad's new family. There was bullying at school because of his Dublin accent, and at first he tried to lose it, to blend in, but then he thought, Fuck it, this is who I am, and he battered the bullies, divided and conquered, and kept his accent like a badge of honour.

He was more of a man than the boys at school. He smoked more, he drank more, he impressed the girls. He liked that, the way they hung around him, showing off, competing for his attention. It turned the tide, made him popular with the lads because they wanted to be around the girls, and the girls were around Brendan.

Peter was a hit with the girls too: they were always going on about his smile. It was the kind of smile that made you grin back at him like an idiot.

You had to watch out for the queers, that's what Brendan's dad said, and so did Father Byrne; they'd turn you into one of them if you let them. They never said how, but Jesus, it was terrifying. It was only slowly that the feelings Brendan had, that he thought maybe all boys had but kept secret, began to overwhelm him. It didn't feel unnatural, so he couldn't be a queer, could he? But people might think he was if they found out what he wanted: the sex he wanted.

His secret stayed secret until he was desperate, and drunk enough to take a chance that all boys had the same secret longing to do what he wanted to do. Peter's reaction was repulsion, and fury, and Brendan felt it too: it was disgusting, just like his dad said, and if he was going to be one of them, he'd rather be dead.

:::::::

"Brendan?" The counsellor's voice pulled him back.

"What?"

"We were talking about why you were angry, that day with Rae."

"Because of Declan. My son. Because of him."

"What was your fear, Brendan, about Declan knowing about your sexuality?"

Sexuality? Poncey word.

Fear? That was a word he understood.

:::::::

Fear of being left. Every time his dad went out drinking, he knew his mum feared he wouldn't come back, and sometimes he wouldn't, for days at a time; until the time he never came back. Brendan couldn't understand why it mattered – they were better off without him, the way he treated her, the way he despised Brendan. But he feared it anyway.

Then with his dad's new family, the sense that he was a cuckoo in the nest. Feeling loved by his dad's new woman, but fearing it could never last, because nothing good ever did.

Fear of letting himself act on his feelings. Look what happened with Peter. Peter had shown him what a freak he was: Brendan could still recall the horror on his face, the repugnance with which he'd pushed him away. Then there was nothing left of their friendship because Brendan couldn't ever face him after the two things he'd done to the guy: wanting him, and crippling him.

It was fear of what he was that had made him grab on to Eileen for dear life. Eileen, one of the girls who'd flirted. She was meant to make him normal, and when he made her pregnant, he thought she had. Only, God knew he was a liar, and took the baby, and he couldn't leave her after that, could he? Even though the hollowness at his centre grew worse each day, and he knew it wasn't right.

:::::::

He spoke, to silence his thoughts.

"I thought I'd lose him, didn't I? Declan, I thought he'd..."

"And how did he react?"

"He... I talked to him, and he wasn't... he didn't..." Brendan felt as if there was a hand squeezing his throat. He fought to make his voice sound strong, in control. "He was fine."

"And your expectation that he'd react badly: was that based on previous experience?"

:::::::

Declan was fine. That's why Brendan went after Rae, because Declan was fine. Suddenly Brendan could see where all his fears and duplicity had got him, the years of hiding and denial and rejection of anyone who got too close. Rae made him see it, and he hated her for it.

The lad in that bar when Declan was a baby, who gave him the eye and he thought, why not? Because he hadn't stopped wanting it, even though Peter had shown him what a freak he was, even though he was married now and it was his wife he should be wanting. So he followed this lad to the toilets, and they wanked each other off, their breath catching as they tried to keep quiet. And it was a relief, in more ways than one: a satisfaction, even in those few minutes in a cubicle in the grubby toilets of a dismal bar, that he'd never felt with Eileen. And then the lad tried to kiss him, and Brendan smashed him against the wall: You filthy queer. Brendan fled, leaving the boy crying on the floor. That wasn't what he was, one of them, and it made him sick that the lad had assumed he was.

Then Brendan started getting away from home, as a runner for a guy who did business in clubs and pubs in Belfast and on the mainland. In London, he met Benjamin – Ben, he called himself – and one night it ended up just the two of them drinking, and Brendan got drunk enough to fall into bed with him in a hotel room. Benjamin was older, knew what to do; and what he did was like nothing Brendan had ever known or even imagined. They hooked up every time Brendan was in town, and he learnt a lot. The first thing he learnt was that a kiss could be a sexual act and not a sign of weakness.

Then Benjamin ended it.

Brendan swore that in future, he would pick up the lads he wanted, and he'd be the one who decided when it was over, and no other man would take the lead and bugger him and make him want them more than they wanted him. If anyone was going to be used, he'd make fucking sure it wasn't him.

:::::::

What was the point of sitting here, listening to the clock ticking, with all this stuff churning in his mind and the counsellor watching him, waiting for him to talk? She'd have a long wait. Talking was what women did. Men drank, and got on with it.

This woman had questions, but he didn't see her coming up with any answers. Still he waited; if this was as confidential as Vashti said it was, there'd be no comeback on him if he didn't play ball, and he was happy to let her crack first. And she did.

"Your son's acceptance is important, Brendan, but to what extent do you feel that you've accepted yourself?"

Brendan glared at her. She was beginning to grate on him, her soothing tone an irritant, her conciliatory manner a provocation. He felt a muscle below his eye begin to twitch, and he knew that she would notice and guess that she'd touched a nerve. He cleared his throat.

"Dunno what you're getting at."

"Sorry, let me explain. From what you've told me, issues around your sexuality are a trigger for your feelings of anger. Is that a fair assumption?"

"No shit."

Vashti came the closest he'd seen her come to a smile since he'd stepped into this room; he almost smiled back.

"Self-acceptance is crucial to one's wellbeing," she continued, "And to the formation of healthy relationships. Is this something that you see as a difficult area?"

Brendan exhaled sharply. Relationships. What did this have to do with him?

:::::::

Other people's marriages always looked, from the outside, much the same as his. Bringing up kids, doing whatever you had to do to pay the rent, arguing and slamming doors but hanging on in there. He loved his children, the only thing in his life that was unequivocal. And he loved Eileen: they were tied together by what they'd been through, losing their first born, scratching their way out of poverty, staying strong for each other when Declan was ill. Brendan liked sleeping with her warm, soft body next to him. He wanted to look after her.

The sex was alright. He found that he could usually get there if he thought about the right things at the right moment. Eileen seemed to like it, anyway, and wanted it to happen more often than it did. Brendan never wanted it, not with her, and he avoided it as much as he could. When they did it, he felt as if he was assaulting her, defiling her in some way. She wanted him to do it to her, but she was the mother of his children, for fucksake, and her desire seemed to him inappropriate and degrading.

There were men, from early on. Just fumbles at first, once or twice, and then Benjamin, and then he was gone and things changed. Random encounters whenever Brendan was away from home in another city, that satisfied him physically but made him nauseous afterwards. They helped his marriage, he told himself, because he was always kinder to Eileen when he got home, the guilt driving him to be loving and attentive.

Then things changed again: the job running a club in Liverpool, and living there alone because it wasn't fair to uproot the kids. That was when he stopped needing those casual hook-ups, because he found Vinnie. Vincent, with his blond hair and his smile and his wide-eyed admiration. It was so easy, once he'd got him, to keep having him, and there was a pleasure in the familiarity. That same feeling he'd had with Eileen sleeping beside him, except with this boy, the sex was what Brendan had wanted all along.

Was that a relationship? Vincent wanted it to be, and got clingy; and because a relationship between two men was absurd, Brendan left him and went back to Belfast, and barely ever spoke to him again.

Then Macca, Eileen's little nephew who was suddenly all grown up, and up for anything. He was discreet, because careless words would blow a hole in his family – Macca had as much to lose as Brendan did, so Brendan was more relaxed than he'd ever felt before. Again, the familiarity had a kind of appeal. But you couldn't call the thing a relationship, not when Brendan treated him like he did. Hurting him to control him, or to push him away just to see if he could reel him in again; and he always could. He got the boy so locked in to that pattern that when Brendan wanted it over, the poor kid just couldn't get the message.

He did the same thing with Stephen: reeled him in, pushed him away. Only, the rules got confused, and the game changed. There was something about him that set him apart, and Brendan thought he might go insane trying to work out what it was so he could conquer it. Stephen was beautiful, but so had Vincent been. It wasn't about what he did in bed, at least not at first: Macca had experience and no boundaries, whereas Stephen had everything to learn.

It was only when Brendan looked back, and finally worked out why he'd done everything he'd done – scheming to control him, fighting to get him back; killing to protect him – that he realised that losing him was the worst imaginable thing. And that he couldn't deny it any more: he was in love with Stephen.

And then the real world crashed in, and the fear got its grip on him again, and Brendan tried to see a way through it; but Stephen couldn't understand why what he wanted from Brendan was impossible for now. And because Stephen couldn't understand, and wouldn't wait for Brendan to deal with his family in his own way, the door was slammed. Brendan got it: got that the lad was young, and had been hurt and disappointed too many times. Stephen was right in a way. Brendan had let himself believe that he could be different, because this boy was worth the risk; but Stephen saw him, and made Brendan see himself, for what he was, irredeemable. And when Brendan was arrested for killing that girl, and Stephen thought it might be true, it was obvious, wasn't it? They'd both been kidding themselves.

Brendan rebuilt his walls.

Relationships? Nothing to do with him.

:::::::

Most of the hour had been spent in silence. The minute hand crawled painfully around the clock face, and finally the time was up.

"I'd love to stay and chat, doc, but I've got a cell to get back to."

"What I'd like to do, if I may, is write to your GP with a recommendation that you see someone. There are programmes specifically to train people to manage their anger. I understand that you're reluctant to talk about the underlying issues, Brendan, but do you think you might consider it in other surroundings?"

Brendan thought of Warren Fox, and almost shuddered. His smug face, his taunting voice; the things he knew about Brendan and what he'd done; the veiled allusions to what happened to queers in prison. The threats he'd carried through with, that had got Brendan to a point where he not only expected, but in a twisted way almost welcomed, the beatings.

Anger management?

"No thanks, doc."

Brendan needed to stay angry.

:::::::

It was Brian who came to escort him back to his cell.

"How was it, Brendan?" he asked. "Any help?"

"Waste of time."

"That's a shame, son. It was worth a try, some of the lads find it useful."

"It's probably me, Brian. I just got nothing to talk about."