He reviewed the events of the last two days. The dreaded phone call from Tom, when he knew by the tone of his brother’s voice, the rest of the conversation would not be a good one. There were the deliberations about whether to return at all, and then the argument with Maggie on his arrival. What was the argument about? What was it Maggie said that irritated him so much? Why did even being in the same room as her make him feel so uncomfortable? He intended staying at Maggie’s, but left in a rush, and instead he and Annie had made their way here late last night. They moved between the tiny kitchen and the bedrooms. While he slept in his old room, Annie slept in his mother’s bed. Downstairs in the living room, his mother Mary lay dead in an open casket.

Cormac was 40 years old yesterday. He was born and grew up in the village of Killane, on the edge of Belfast, at the height of Northern Ireland’s bloody divisive conflict. He was raised by Catholic parents and educated by a combination of vicious priests and violent nuns. He was the youngest of three brothers and one sister.

His memories of childhood, although fading fast, were that he was essentially happy and loved. His brothers, Daniel and Tom, who were both much older than Cormac, loved him in a protective Irish way, because he was their ‘baby’ brother. Tom, the eldest, who’d never married, now ran a successful music store in West Belfast. He was one of the few people Cormac had kept in touch with over the last two decades. Daniel, a year younger than Tom, was the black sheep of the family until he died, aged 26, when Cormac was 10. He moved out of the family home at 17 but remained a regular visitor until his death. At the height of the ‘troubles’, he wandered drunkenly into the wrong place at the wrong time and was beaten to death with baseball bats and golf clubs in an alley in the warren of terraced houses that merged to form Belfast’s ‘peace line.’ Maggie was different. She was born 13 years before him, on the same day, and he sometimes felt that their birthday was all they had in common. His earliest memories were of his fear of being left alone with her when his parents would go on their weekly visit to the local pub. No matter how hard he tried to ‘be good,’ Maggie always found some reason to punish him. After years of trying to impress her, to gain some respect from her, to connect with her, it no longer mattered to him what she thought, said or did.

‘Dad, Dad, get up, Aunty Maggie and Uncle Jack will be here in a minute and we left the kitchen in a mess last night!’

Cormac looked up from the bed, and there before him stood his reason for living. With her red hair tumbling down her shoulders, bright blue eyes and a complexion as pale as snow, stood his one and only Annie. She never knew her mother. His wife Jill had died from the complications of Annie’s birth. From that moment, he devoted his life equally to Annie and his career.