‘Steady on the Catholic guilt, partner! I can’t speak for the rest of them. But you never let me down. I was happy that you got out before it destroyed you. Christ, I missed you. But I was proud of you. I am proud of you – my best friend, the Prime minister of Great Britain!’

‘Not quite, Harry. Besides, it’s not Catholic guilt, it’s a fact. Everything and everyone in my life, I left them all behind, and ran away. Do you know how many times I saw my own mother in the last 22 years, Harry? Never! What sort of a man doesn’t even see his own mother in all that time?’

‘It’s not like you didn’t have your reasons. We all knew you went out with Liam that night. He ended up in the Maze for God knows how long, but you didn’t. He confessed, he said you weren’t there. We knew you would have had no part in something like that. You had to get away. You were a frightened little boy, out of your depth, brainwashed by the history of this sad little island. We knew they would never let you come back. What chance did you really have, Cormac? A great-grandfather who died in the GPO in 1916, a brother murdered for no good reason, and the regular brainwashing sessions in Lalor’s. You were fucked before you were even born! It was painful for me to watch someone like you get dragged further and further into that shit. I would have loved to have seen more of you over these years, and I thought a thousand times about contacting you, but I just guessed if you needed me, you would find me. Most of all, I was happy that you got out relatively unscathed.’

‘The problem is, Harry I didn’t get out in time. By the time I did, I was too far gone and they owned me. Now I am home as a stranger to my own family. I’ve missed so much that I can never get back. Now that the situation has changed, I want to spend more time here. Get to know who I am and more importantly, accept who I was. Now everything has moved on, I want to make it up to everyone I hurt. I thought I would never be able to come back here without looking over my shoulder every two minutes, but now I’m here, I can see it was an illusion. It was the machinations of a frightened little boy who was still running. I can see now everything has changed and it can never go back. I want my life back, Harry.’

His friend was shaking his head.

‘Cormac, I don’t know what they’ve been telling you lot at Westminster, but I don’t quite share your utopian vision of current events.’

‘I don’t understand, Harry. Are you suggesting that nothing has changed?’

‘No, of course it has changed. I’m just saying the underlying mistrust and hatred will take another generation or two to truly wither and die. Come and have a look at this.’