There were forty people on James's training floor and he did not know one of their names.
He came up the stairs to the observation level at ten past eight with a coffee he had bought on Swords Road, and stopped at the rail, and looked down into the north hall at four rows of ten in numbered bibs, standing about in the loose way people stand when they have been told to wait and are trying not to look nervous.
Bib numbers. That had been Maeve's.
*Nobody uses a name on the floor. Ronan and Cillian score a number and the number gets matched to a file afterward by somebody who wasn't in the room.*
Six weeks.
