He glanced over and said chirpily, as if her single status was something she actually had control over, 'No, you're quite right. You don't want to be tying yourself down just yet. Plenty of time for settling down later. Meanwhile just enjoy being young, free and single.' He grinned happily, content in the knowledge that Lucy was having the time of her life at uni. She couldn't bear to see the disappointment in his face if she owned up to being what she was a social outcast, a freak.

At the Broadway roundabout they turned onto Glenmachan Street, eventually joining the Lisburn Road heading north, back towards the city centre. They were almost there. Lucy put a hand on her stomach, hard as a nut, and took a deep breath to quell the nausea.

On Eglantine Avenue she racked her brains for a way to get into the house without him coming too. Too soon, they turned into Wellington Park Avenue, lined on both sides with gardenless Victorian terraced houses. Dad pulled up outside a red-brick house with bay windows on the ground and first floor and peeling white paint on the windowsills. Lights blazed in every window. Her heart sank everyone must be back already.

'Here we are then.' Dad turned off the engine and took the key out of the ignition.

Lucy quickly unclipped her seat belt and cracked open the car door. 'Oh, don't bother getting out, Dad. There's no need for both of us to get wet, is there?'

He gave her an indulgent smile and, completely ignoring her, put his hand on the door handle. 'Don't be ridiculous, Lucy. Your bag weighs a tonne. I'll carry it in for you.'

He got out of the car to open the boot and Lucy had no choice but to follow him. While he'd seen the house, she'd so far managed to avoid him meeting her housemates.

When he ran up the path with the bag she grasped its handle and tried to wrench it out of his hand. 'I can take it from here, Dad,' she said firmly but he simply pushed past her with, 'Don't be silly, Lucy. Let's get out of this awful rain.'

She stumbled into the hall and watched in horror as he dumped her bag on the sticky floor she was the only one who ever cleaned anything in the house and headed straight for the lounge from which pounding music, and the sound of female voices, issued forth.

'No!' she cried out, desperately. 'Don't leave my bag there. It's in the way. Let's take it upstairs.'

But though he must've heard her, he paid no heed. He disappeared into the lounge. She crept to the door, moving silently like a cat, and peered into the room. Four of them were there, in the process of preparing to go out, competing sounds blaring from someone's iPod docking station and the TV. Fran was putting make-up on in front of a magnifying mirror balanced on top of the slate mantelpiece, the only original feature left in the house after its butchery of a conversion. Vicky, swaying her hips to the music, held a pair of hair straighteners in her hand. Bernie knelt in front of the coffee table, measuring Tesco Value vodka into a pint gla.s.s. A rag bag a.s.sortment of gla.s.ses, made cloudy by too many cycles in the dishwasher without dishwashing tablets, salt or rinse aid, littered the dusty coffee table, along with a carton of cranberry juice. The girls never went out without getting pole-axed first.

They all stared when Dad, looking like a lecturer in fine brown cords and an open-necked checked flannel shirt, appeared in their midst. His hands were shoved into his trouser pockets, his arms holding back the tails of the suit jacket he wore over everything.

'Hi,' he said, raising his big hand in a friendly greeting. Then, realising they could not hear him over the din, he shouted. 'I'm David. Lucy's Dad.'

Someone turned the music off and Bernie, blonde hair tied up haphazardly on top of her head like an untidy nest, got off her knees and said, all friendly like, 'Hi ya. What about ye?' No one touched the TV control so the rest of the conversation took place against the sound of Dancing on Ice.

'Well, well, well,' he said, surveying the state of the room clothes strewn on the floor; an overflowing ashtray on the hearth; a tube of hair product lying on the floor, greasy contents oozing out onto the cheap laminate; the stale smell of a room never aired. The girls looked uncertainly at one another.

He looked at the bottle of cheap vodka and for one awful moment Lucy thought he was going to say something about their drinking. But his face broke into a beaming smile. 'Getting ready to go out, then?'

'Yeah, that's right,' said Vicky, putting the straighteners down on a pink towel she'd draped over the arm of the burgundy sofa. Underneath was a horrible black scar where she'd already burned it. The landlord would take money out of all their deposits for that.

'Oh, that's great, Lucy,' he said, turning around and taking a step backwards to expose her to everyone's gaze. 'You've arrived just in time.'

Lucy felt her face redden as the girls exchanged puzzled glances and then all stared at her. 'Where are youse off to, then? Thompsons?' she asked, slipping into the vernacular, and dredging up the name of a nightclub she'd overheard people talk about.

There was a subdued t.i.tter of laughter. Cathy, the only natural blonde among them, looked up from her place on the sofa, where she was stretched out reading Now magazine. 'No one goes to Thompsons on a Sunday night,' she said evenly, her thin lips unsmiling. Lucy gripped her upper arms so hard they hurt, praying that the ordeal would soon be over.

Bernie lit a cigarette, narrowing her eyes until they were no more than slits. She inhaled then removed the cigarette from her mouth with a little popping sound. 'We're going to Kremlin.'

Pretending that this statement const.i.tuted an invitation, Lucy cleared her throat and said, 'Well, I've other plans for tonight.'

This seemed to annoy Dad for he said, sharply, 'What other plans? You didn't mention them in the car.' And he held out his arm in a sweeping gesture towards the girls, like a cinema attendant showing her to her seat. 'Sure, why don't you go out with the girls?'

What was wrong with him? Couldn't he see they hated her? Or maybe this was his awful, clumsy way of trying to force her on these unwilling airheads. He'd been doing it as long as she could remember. But she had tried to fit in, delighted that Vicky, who'd shared a maths module with her in first year, had invited her to join them even though she got the poky room at the back of the house that never got the sun. But she'd very soon discovered, eavesdropping, that she'd only been asked because they couldn't find anyone 'sound'. After that she stopped trying to ingratiate herself with them. And in some ways it was a relief.

'I just remembered. I'm going out with Amy,' she improvised, holding up her mobile phone as evidence of some prior arrangement. Then she remembered that Amy always went to church on Sunday nights but anything was better than staying here one minute longer. 'Look, I'd better get a move on, Dad,' she said, retreating from the room. 'She'll be wondering where I am.'

And, to her great relief, he followed her, calling out a cheery 'Goodbye' on his way. Immediately the music came back on. Lucy practically ran up the stairs, her stomach so tight it hurt, and unlocked the door to her neat and tidy room on the first floor. Dad followed her into the room and set the bag down on the floor. Lucy pulled out her mobile and, ignoring the cold water trickling down the back of her neck, pretended to read a text. 'She'll be here in a minute.'

When she'd finally got rid of him, Lucy covered her face with her hands. She'd tried so hard but she couldn't do it any more. She hated everything about her life here in Belfast, in this house. There was only one thing that made it in any way tolerable. Quickly, she got her laptop out, went over to the small desk and plugged it into the large monitor. Immediately her heartbeat slowed.

She'd seen the TV ads for a new online bingo site at the weekend and she knew what that meant special promotions. She'd already exhausted all the offers open to new players on every other site and there were dozens of them. Sure enough, this site was offering a twenty-five-pound bonus to new players. The only problem was, you had to deposit ten pounds to qualify for it and part of her current financial plan involved restricting herself to five pounds a day: thirty-five pounds a week. She frowned, but her hesitation was momentary after tonight's humiliation, she deserved a treat.

When the money was gone, Lucy sat staring at the debit card lying on the table. If she deposited another ten pounds she would earn a fifty per cent bonus. She liked that word 'deposit'. It sounded safe, rea.s.suring and it reminded her that this was an investment in her future. She picked up the card and keyed in the number ...

Later still, she sat on her bed, the music now thumping so loudly, she felt the vibration through the soles of her feet. The money was all gone and she'd won nothing. She tried not to feel disheartened. It was only a temporary setback. She looked at her watch. The girls would not leave the house until ten o'clock, maybe later, and they would not come home until the early hours. She could not bear it a minute longer. She grabbed her purse and keys and ran out of the room.

'I didn't think this would be your scene,' said Amy, handing Lucy a gla.s.s of orange juice. There was wine an unopened bottle of red and another of white on the sideboard but no one seemed to be touching it so Lucy didn't either.

She took a sip of the lukewarm drink and tried to ignore the wet jeans sticking to her thighs she'd had to walk all the way over here in the rain to gatecrash this party. The party, if you could call it that, was in the lounge of a student house on Stranmillis Gardens, much the same as the house Lucy shared. Except this one was clean and it didn't smell of chip fat and stale cigarette smoke. And this shindig was nothing like the parties the girls at Wellington Park Avenue threw. For a start, no one was smoking, shouting, vomiting or snogging someone they hardly knew on the sofa.

People stood around in small groups talking quietly and laughing, some kind of acoustic guitar music playing softly in the background. A smiling girl came round carrying a tray of c.o.c.ktail sausages. Lucy took one and nibbled it thoughtfully. There was something else that marked these people out from her housemates, apart from their wholesome appearance they were friendly. Yet Lucy felt as alien here at she did at Wellington Park Avenue.

'You know what the girls in the house are like, Amy. They were getting stuck into vodka and cranberry juice,' she offered to explain her presence. 'The music was so loud I couldn't stand it. I had to get out.'

Amy raised her right eyebrow, the same colour as her flaming red hair. With her sharp features, small pale eyes behind wire-framed gla.s.ses and translucent skin so white it almost glowed, Amy was not beautiful. But she had an inner goodness that drew people to her and she was a kind and loyal friend. She read Pure Mathematics and they'd known each other since the start of first year. And while Lucy had known from the outset that Amy was a committed Christian, she had only ever tried to force her beliefs on Lucy in the gentlest of manners, occasionally inviting her along to special events run by the Christian Union.

'I don't know why you share with them, Lucy,' she said at last, shaking her head ruefully. 'They're not like you.'

Who is? thought Lucy. She wished for a moment that she had faith like Amy, so that she might feel connected to the people in this room. She wanted to belong to feel part of something. But, while she believed in G.o.d, she could honestly say that she had never felt personally touched by His spirit. The compulsory religious studies she'd done in school had always felt like an interesting, but academic, exercise.

'Well, I don't have much choice. I'm tied in by the lease agreement until the end of the academic year,' said Lucy. Even if she extricated herself from the house, where would she go? Amy couldn't help she lived with her parents in East Belfast. She could live at home she supposed, but her parents would want to know what was wrong. They claimed university was as much about 'the student experience' as it was about academic achievement. They had no idea what it meant in reality for Lucy.

'Well, I'm really sorry to hear that,' said Amy, looking into her drink. 'I know how much you hate it there.'

A loud ripple of laughter broke out on the other side of the room, giving Lucy the opportunity to look away, effectively bringing the depressing conversation to an end.

A small group of girls near the door to the kitchen were cl.u.s.tered around a very tall, well-built man, maybe six foot four, with a straight choppy fringe of light brown hair and a broad, clean-shaven face. His big hand encircled a pint gla.s.s of c.o.ke and he was casually dressed in distressed jeans and a faded rugby shirt with the collar turned up around his thick neck. He looked older than the rest of the group and the way he held himself straight-backed and square-shouldered combined with his imposing physique gave him an air of authority. His reserved, lopsided smile suggested that he was the source of the sudden mirth.

The laughter died away and the tall man glanced up, his eyebrows knitted together in an amused expression. His blue-eyed gaze, as bright and piercing as a spear, met Lucy's and she felt a strange, unfamiliar sensation in her stomach. Her heartbeat fluttered momentarily, then stabilised again. Startled, she put a hand to her chest as if holding it there might steady her heartbeat.

'I can't stay long tonight,' said Amy, glancing at her watch, and Lucy looked over her shoulder to see who the man was staring at. But there was no one there. When she turned round again, he was standing right in front of her. She let out a little silent gasp and, shyly, looked up at his face.

'Hi, I'm Oren Wilson,' he said, the smile replaced with a searching, curious look as if he was trying to remember if he'd met her before. To Amy he said, without looking, 'How's it going, Amy?'

'Good. This is Lucy Irwin, Oren,' said Amy absentmindedly, and she waved at someone on the other side of the room. 'Did you win today?'

'Fifteen-three,' he said and, taking in Lucy's blank face he added, 'Rugby. We were playing against Malone.'

'Oren's captain of the first eleven,' interjected Amy.

Lucy, impressed, said, 'Oh.'

'Yep, a couple of my team-mates are over there.' Oren pointed at two ruddy-faced, muscled blokes amongst the group he'd been talking to. 'They're sound lads. The rest of them are out getting smashed somewhere.' He rolled his eyes and his smile, when he shook his head, conveyed a kind of benign disapproval.

'Look, would you two excuse me a moment?' said Amy. 'I have to speak to Carolyn about Talkshop on Thursday night. We're nearly out of coffee and biscuits.'

Amy disappeared and Oren, who had not taken his eyes off Lucy, said, 'So, are you a first year?'

'N ... No,' said Lucy and she tried to smile but her heart was inexplicably full of a feeling akin to, but not quite the same as, dread. 'I'm second year, like Amy. I'm doing Applied Mathematics and Physics.'

'You must be very clever,' he said, his tone one of mild amus.e.m.e.nt rather than conviction. Was he making fun of her?

'Are you?' she squeaked.

He laughed easily at this. 'With humility comes wisdom. In that sense, I hope I have insight.'

She blushed, tongue-tied by confusion and said at last, 'I ... I meant are you a first year?' And then she blushed again at the stupidity of her question while Oren looked on, his thin closed lips almost smiling. He was too old to be a first year; he must be a mature student, or a lecturer even. 'So, what are you doing? I mean studying? If you're a student, that is ...' Her voice trailed away and she looked at the floor, wishing it would open up and swallow her whole. Not only was she stupid, she could hardly string a coherent sentence together.

He nodded thoughtfully and said quietly, 'I have a degree in Law. But I'm still a student.' At this she lifted her face, and he smiled down on her. 'I'm in my first year of a degree in Theology at The Irish Baptist College.' In response to her blank face, he added, 'The college in Moira is a const.i.tuent part of Queen's.'

'I see,' she said and, unable to think of anything more to say, she downed the rest of the orange juice. Law and Theology! He was far too clever to be interested in someone like her.

'Lucy,' he said and paused. He stared at her for what seemed like a long time, and though it was uncomfortable, it was mesmerising too she was unable to turn away. She stared into his eyes, as blue and all-encompa.s.sing as the sky on a cloudless day, and time ground slowly to a halt. She was aware only of the sound of her breathing and the pulse throbbing in her clenched jaw.

And then, slowly and deliberately, he extended his right hand, big as a plate, and placed it on her shoulder as though bestowing something on her. His fingers, pressing lightly into the taut muscle between her shoulder and her neck, induced an exquisite tender pain. She blinked and, at last, he said, 'It's okay.'

The weight of his hand and the simple words of rea.s.surance which seemed to convey a much deeper message than mere acknowledgement of her nervousness flooded her veins like the vodka she'd once drunk to try to escape her life. She felt the muscles in her neck and shoulders relax.

'You're amongst friends here. You don't need to be afraid.'

She blinked, stunned by this uncomplicated truth. She was afraid. Fear defined her. She was afraid of rejection, afraid of failure, afraid to be herself.

But how could Oren see this? He didn't know her. How could he see what no one else seemed to, even her own family? Even Matt. If he could see what she was really like inside, why was he still standing there talking to her?

She glanced nervously into the bottom of her empty gla.s.s, her hand shaking. Was this what people meant when they talked about making a connection with someone? An awful feeling of terror and joy all muddled up so that she didn't know what to say or think. It was as if her heart had suddenly been laid bare. She swallowed and tried to summon the courage not to turn tail and run.

'It's okay,' he whispered again and his hand slipped from her shoulder.

Her legs suddenly felt too weak and she stumbled to the nearest sofa where she sat down, oblivious now to everyone in the room but Oren. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears blocking out the sounds around her. Was it possible that the impossible had happened? Had she finally found someone who understood her? To her amazement, he came and sat on the edge of the sofa beside her, sitting slightly forward and at an angle, his long muscular legs buckled awkwardly like a gra.s.shopper's.

He looked directly into her face. 'Are you okay?' she lip-read rather than heard.

She thought about this for some moments as the rushing sound faded away and at last, calmer now, she nodded and smiled for the first time. Realising he was waiting for her to speak, she said, 'Yes, I'm fine, thank you.' She paused and added, looking at the dark, damp patches on her jeans, 'I'm sorry. I don't do small-talk. At least not very well.'

He roared with laughter at this, throwing his head back so that his Adam's apple protruded like a fleshy rock. When the laughter had subsided he said, 'That's hardly a fault, Lucy. I wish there were more people like you in the world.'

She brightened and lifted her head. He was smiling at her, his eyes crinkled up at the corners. No one had ever said anything like that to her before. Her reserved, awkward nature, which she had always seen as a failing, suddenly felt like an a.s.set.

'Tell me about yourself, Lucy. Where do you live?'

Breathlessly, as though she couldn't get the words out fast enough, she told him about the girls she shared with and how she didn't fit in. He shook his head sadly and fixed her with a pained look that marred his fine, open countenance. 'They don't sound like the sort of people you should be consorting with, Lucy.'

'You're so right, Oren! They're not,' she cried and shook her head vigorously, wondering that she had ever desired their haughty friendship.

He rubbed his chin thoughtfully. 'Is that why you're here tonight? To get away from them?'

She nodded. 'I knew they wouldn't go out to Kremlin until late and I couldn't stand it a minute longer.'

'Kremlin?' he said, and tucked his chin against his chest, the way Dad did when he had a bout of indigestion. Talking as if he'd swallowed something unpleasant, he said, 'Did you say Kremlin?'

'Yes,' she said and smiled. 'Have you really never heard of it?'

He looked into his gla.s.s of c.o.ke and said, 'Oh, I've heard of it all right. Belfast's first nightclub for gays.'

She shrugged. 'Well, yes. But lots of straight people go there too. I've been.'

'Well, you shouldn't,' he said, sharply, setting the c.o.ke on the coffee table.

'Why ever not?'

'Because h.o.m.os.e.xuality is a sin. Simple as that,' he said sadly, clapping his hands together with enough force to make a loud sound.

'Oh,' said Lucy who knew no gay people personally, but held fairly tolerant views on the subject or thought she did. 'But that sounds so ... so judgemental.'

'Don't get me wrong, Lucy,' he said, his eyes burning with pa.s.sion, 'I'm not a h.o.m.ophobe. I don't hate them, not like some awful bigots calling themselves Christian. I don't hate anyone or anything, only sin itself. G.o.d loves everyone and I pray that all sinners might find redemption through Jesus Christ Our Lord.' He paused and added, his voice breaking, 'You must understand that the reason I care so much is that I know that if they don't repent they'll go to h.e.l.l.' He formed his right hand into a tight fist.

Lucy, both moved and alarmed by the strength of his feeling, touched him on the back of his strong forearm. 'But don't you think that nowadays, we should be more tolerant of people who are ... different? Isn't that one of the things that defines a civilised society?'

'Oh, Lucy,' he said, sounding so disappointed it pained her. 'Don't you know your Bible?'

She shook her head wordlessly, feeling for the first time ever as if she ought to, if only to make him happy.

'It's written clear as day in Leviticus, chapter eighteen, verse twenty-two. Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind. It is abomination.'

If this was what the Bible said, then fair enough. But she wasn't sure she agreed with it, even though she admired Oren for his convictions. She wished she had some of her own.

'You do read the Bible, don't you?'

'I don't even own one,' she said and heard his sharp intake of breath. Then hot, damp palms closed over her right hand like it was something precious and the troubled look was replaced with a confident smile. 'Promise me you'll not go to Kremlin again, Lucy,' he said and closed his eyes momentarily. When he opened them again, the smile was gone and he was staring at her as if he never wanted to look on another living creature all his life.

'Please,' he said and her heartbeat quickened. The idea that what she did actually mattered to him, thrilled her to the core.

'Okay. I never liked it that much anyway.'

He grinned, patted the back of her hand and placed it gently on her knee. 'Thank you,' he said as if she'd just relieved him of a great burden. And even though he did not smile, he said, 'You've no idea how happy it makes me to hear you say that.'

She basked in the steady, blue-eyed gaze of his approval, her heart br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with a joy she had not felt since before her parents separated. Oren cared for her, he accepted her just the way she was, and that was more than any man had ever done before with the exception of Matt. She realised then that she would do everything within her power to make Oren look upon her always the way he was looking at her now as if she were something to be cherished.

'I see goodness in you, Lucy Irwin,' he said, and her stomach made a sudden, nauseating flip. She wasn't good. She harboured a horrible, shameful habit that had led her to lie to her parents. She wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold. 'Oh, Oren, you don't know me. You don't know me at all. I ... I'm not good. I ... I ...'

'We're all sinners.' He patted her lightly on the knee. 'There's no shame in admitting it. Trust in the Lord, Lucy.' He removed his hand and lowered his voice to a whisper. 'For the truth shall set you free.'

A long, anguished pause followed, during which she pressed her hands between her knees to stop them shaking. Oren averted his gaze and stared at the worn carpet with a benign, encouraging smile on his lips. She wanted to be honest with Oren. If the Lord could forgive her, then he would too. She was certain of it. And yet she had not told anyone, not a soul, about her secret, private life. Finding the right words was difficult. At last she glanced around, checked no one was close enough to hear, and breathed quietly, 'I ... I gamble.'

He nodded, still staring at the carpet. His hands, clasped together loosely, tightened just a fraction. She blushed with shame and closed her eyes, knowing that if she continued to look at him, she would not be able to carry on. And yet she wanted him to know the truth. If he could forgive her, she could forgive herself.