When the rosary had finished, he shook hands with familiar strangers and wondered how so many people could fit into such a small space as his mother’s living room. Why did they want to? Maggie came to find him hiding in the sanctuary of the kitchen, which the strangers thankfully seemed to think was out of bounds for them.

‘They’re putting the lid on now. Are you sure you don’t want to see her?’

He meant to tell her to go away. He intended to tell her to leave him alone, and to let him grieve in his own way. Instead he took her hand and walked into the living room. He wished he hadn’t.

The funeral service passed in a blur; all incense and ritual. There was nothing personal about her life; just empty promises of a better place. He took no comfort from it. He knew he should never have gone into the room with Maggie. He should never have given in to her. All through the service, he frantically searched for images of his mother as a walking, talking, living person. He tried to conjure the comforting images of his childhood: coming in from school on dark winter evenings, his mother at the kitchen window waiting just for him, always with a smile, always with a hug. He desperately needed to see her again as a vibrant living being: the feel of her warmth, her laughter, her smell. The more he struggled, the more he could only visualise the stony grey monstrosity in the living room that he then helped lower into the darkness of the earth. Now they were back in the house and the party was in grotesque, alcohol-fuelled swing. He needed to escape. He took to his mother’s bed.

The creaking of the floorboards punctured the silence as Tom entered the room.

‘Sorry about not coming to your rescue earlier, Cormac.’

The brothers had shared an eventful afternoon together before Cormac’s retreat to the sanctity of his mother’s bed. Old Mrs Hopkins, who always hated their mother, a feeling that was wholeheartedly reciprocated, began wailing uncontrollably on the settee in the living room, telling anyone who hadn’t escaped immediately how the village would never be the same without Mary O’Reilly. He helped Tom to escort her out of the house. The smell of whisky and pickled onions that set fire to his nostrils as she belched loudly in his face suggested to Cormac that normal service would be resumed after her night’s coma. They left Mrs Hopkins, still wailing, on her own identical settee, in her own identical living room, two doors down from his mother’s house.

They had barely entered their mother’s living room again before Cormac found himself pinned against the door trying to answer a question he’d been asked on at least five occasions that day. It involved ‘British Government,’ ‘Ireland,’ and ‘ever done.’

He pleaded in vain for help but Tom merely mouthed ‘fuck that, brother,’ and left him at the mercy of his latest interrogator. Cormac fully understood his brother’s reticence.