And it was true. How did Michael’s winning smile and handsome features in any way resemble Patrick’s ascetic, haunted ones? All that you could see in common was the shape of their hairline, a marked curve, dipping to a point in the middle and arching back – no receding hair in their family.

‘If your father had lived, he’d have been a successful engineer, not a navvy like Patrick, humping coal around.’

‘But he looks after us,’ Katie argued. ‘Doesn’t he? And he can’t help it.’

‘Huh,’ Vera acknowledged, but she couldn’t argue.

Katie didn’t like it when he mother was unkind about Patrick, even when he couldn’t hear it. Every day he came faithfully home, turning down the entry and in through the back door.

‘Don’t bring all that muck and mess in through the front,’ Vera ordered him. But Katie knew that Vera didn’t want people to see him coming in the front. She made him wash in the scullery sink before he came through into the house.

But even Patrick had settled, at least into a pattern that they could more or less predict. His moods came and went in waves, fast and slow, as Vera called them, with brief periods of calm in between, when he was almost like a normal person, before it all began again.

His involvement with things ebbed and flowed. You could tell how he was by his comings and goings in his parish, the English Martyrs in Evelyn Road. For some weeks he’d stay away, sometimes not even going to Mass on a Sunday. At first, when they moved to Sparkhill, the parish priest, Father Daly, called round when Patrick disappeared. He soon gave up, recognizing the pattern himself. Within a few weeks Patrick would start going back to Mass, his thin hair carefully combed back. He’d gravitate, by gradual stages, from slipping in at the back of the congregation to moving forward to the front. Katie went with him sometimes, so she saw the way it went. Soon after that he would rejoin the choir. Patrick had a lovely baritone voice and it was a joy to hear him sing his heart out. He would help with the St Vincent de Paul Society, giving support to the poor, and anything he could – while he was in the right frame of mind. This would last a while and then he’d be off again, not to be seen for weeks. The choir got used to it too. That was the thing about Patrick; he was so polite and gentle, and basically lovable, that in the end he found people who tolerated him. As she grew up, Katie realized that the White Fathers must also have tolerated him for a long time before he became too much of a handful and was despatched home.

It had been similar with jobs. He’d worked in factories at first, but – having no skills – had done menial jobs, packing, fetching and carrying, which also suited his restlessness better than standing still. Among other smaller firms he’d been at Cannings and Co. in Great Hampton Street, and at Wilmot Breedon at Hay Mills. He preferred being outdoors and for a while was with Midland County Dairies. But his disappearing for three days once, without a word, did for that job.