Okay, time for Trassa. Married for fifty-one years, with five children and eleven grandchildren, she projected cosy respectability, underscored by cardigans, shapeless skirts and reading glasses on a chain. A compulsive gambler, she’d admitted herself here to convince Ronan, her middle son—the only one of her children still talking to her—to pay off her latest round of debts.

‘Trassa,’ I said. ‘Your life story, please.’

It was the first written exercise the patients did and usually kick-started their thawing out.

‘It’s not finished yet.’ Her smile was sweet. ‘Might I remind you I’m sixty-eight, I don’t have the energy these young ones do.’

‘Have it ready tomorrow.’ I was stern. ‘In the meantime, why don’t you tell us again exactly why you’re in rehab.’

‘Well…’ A wide smile creased her soft, powdered features. There was something about her that always reminded me of a bap. ‘Ronan, my young fella, overreacted.’

I let that hang in the air for several long moments—then pounced on Dennis. ‘I’ve seen you having chats with Trassa. What has she told you?’

‘Hey!’ Chalkie jumped in. ‘Don’t make a snitch of him!’

‘No, you’re all right.’ Dennis was confident. ‘No one is snitching. Poor Trassa was unlucky, is all. Took cash out on a credit card for a dead certainty on the Grand National. Never saw the bills from the bank because they sent them online. The interest mounted up—the rates are criminal, as I needn’t tell any of ye—and first thing Trassa knew was when debt collectors arrived at her front door, upsetting her husband, Seamus Senior. Who’s in a wheelchair.’

Yes, this sounded familiar. Except in the version I’d been told, the race was the Kentucky Derby.

‘By then the amount she owed had trebled. How could the poor woman pay it? She’s on a pension! One of her sons said he’d cover it, but that she had to “go to rehab”. Same as meself, we’re both here to please another person.’

A rhythmic, high-pitched squeaking noise was now emanating from Giles. He didn’t know how to cry properly because he’d had no practice. Before last weekend, he hadn’t cried in forty-five years. Really, he should have been howling and banging on the floor, mourning his lost decades and the trail of abandoned women and children he’d left in his wake, but he was too repressed. Still, it was encouraging that he was crying at all.

‘Trassa?’ I asked. ‘How much money did your son pay off for you?’

Sharply, she said, ‘That’s private.’

I gave her a look. ‘You’re in rehab. Nothing’s private in here. How much?’

I knew that Trassa had, without mentioning sums, given the impression that it was about fifty euro.

‘I took, I think it was…two thousand euro out from the cash machine.’