Katie digested this, her emotions a swarm of jealousy, anger and curiosity. So she had a half-brother and sister!

‘Will you tell them about me?’ she asked, jutting her chin at him.

‘I might,’ he said cautiously. ‘Only if you’d be wanting me to.’

‘We’ll see,’ she said. ‘Maybe.’ She looked sharply at him. ‘There’s nothing very regular in our family, is there? I was brought up by your brother – and you never even knew.’

Michael O’Neill had been utterly shocked to find out that his brother Patrick had played such a major role in Katie’s life. But it was because of Patrick that he had found her. Michael admitted that he and Anne had moved back to Birmingham a few months ago, when he was offered a good job at Wilmot Breeden in Tyseley. They were living off Shaftmoor Lane.

‘I went to Mass – I don’t go regularly, you know. Not communion, of course – I just slip in the back once in a while, and I went that very first Sunday we were here in Birmingham. And who is the Mass being offered up for, but one Patrick O’Neill? Well, granted, we’re not the only O’Neills in the world, and I assumed Patrick must be still with the Fathers in Uganda. It set me thinking about him, though. He was never quite right, you know, my brother. We weren’t close – he was a good few years older than me, but he was a good man, a gentle soul, you’d say. They thought the missions would sort him out. He was packed off there – it seemed the thing to do. But because of the name, I had a little word with the priest, expecting to be told that Patrick O’Neill had been some old local fellow. But the Father was quite expansive – he’d known Patrick for a short time before he died, said he was a good man and an asset to the parish.

‘So then I asked who had requested the Mass for him. “Oh,” says he, “that’ll have been his niece, little Katie. She’s not living in this parish any more, but I gather she was here as a child. She likes to have a Mass said for him in the parish where he passed away. So far as I know, she’s over in St Francis’s parish now, in Handsworth.” Well, it all came as a shock to me. You – him.’ Michael seemed to run out of words, shaking his head. Again Katie found herself watching his hands, the sprinkling of dark hairs on his fingers. The sight made her ache. Patrick’s had been thinner, the skin papery and dry.

‘He was good to me,’ she said, tears filling her eyes again. ‘As far as he could manage.’

Michael looked searchingly at her. ‘Was he . . . all right? In himself?’

She shook her head. ‘Mom tried to hide it – to hide him. He was, well, up and down in himself. I didn’t understand when I was small. Well, I’m not sure I do now, but I can see it differently. It was very bad sometimes, poor man – he used to disappear. He was a bit like a dog, you know? Going off to lick his wounds, then coming back when he could manage. But he was always kind. He was a tormented soul – no one should have to live like he did. There must be an answer to it. I suppose you wouldn’t know . . .’ Somehow this was news she didn’t want to give harshly, and she spoke in a soft voice. ‘That he took his own life?’