The tiredness hit him as he got up to leave the table. The lack of sleep in the hotel in Dublin hadn’t helped. The events of the day certainly contributed. Time and time again in his life, in moments of great stress, when he’d been frantically revising for exams, or preparing a closing speech in court, sleep would hit him like a hammer. He’d been awakened on more than one occasion by the disgruntled night porter in the law library after he’d fallen into a deep, drooling sleep over some vital piece of research into a crucial point of law in his latest case. Never had he felt like this, though. He thought about crawling into the living room, because he wasn’t convinced he would make it up the stairs. He felt like his body was shutting down in segments, beginning with his legs and working rapidly to his head. He managed to stagger up the staircase with the help of the banister. He pushed open the door to his small bedroom and was under the thin quilt and asleep before his head made contact with the soft pillow.

He awoke in darkness to the rhythmic waves of the rain beating against his window. The morning sun had not yet forced its way through the blackness. Instead, the old street lamp outside the window cast eerie shadows all around the room. Her face woke him. Her face tortured his sleep for the first few years after that night, but he hadn’t thought of in at least ten years. It was back and more vivid than ever. He lay in the darkness and tried to bury it like he had so many sleepless nights before, but this time, she wouldn’t let him. She didn’t want to be buried anymore. She wanted to be remembered. He owed it to her to go back. He could never truly move on without going back. All of the running, all of the hiding, where had it gotten him? Only here, back in the room where the whole nightmare began and with less than one day left to live.

He closed his eyes and did something he swore he’d never do; he cast his mind back to the night of March 9^th, 1987.

36

It was late afternoon as he lay on the bed. Bernadette, who had just turned 18, left to get ready for a birthday dinner with her parents. They’d spent the previous hour lying side by side in the lamplight, listening to music and excitedly discussing how they were going to tell their parents they were engaged to be married. The ring was his present to her, as well as the two cassettes they took turns playing. He bought her ‘The Joshua Tree’, mainly because he liked U2, and a Greatest Hits album by Randy Crawford, because she never stopped going on to him about this song she’d heard called ‘Almaz.’ He mentioned it to Tom, who let him have both albums for the price of one. He could still smell the scent of apples from her hair, on the pillow, now she had gone. They hadn’t parted on good terms after she interrogated him for the fourth time about why he appeared so distant. He snapped at her. He regretted that now. He lay listening to the U2 album she hadn’t bothered to remove before she left. He’d be better tomorrow. Once he got tonight out of the way, everything would go back to normal. He was understandably nervous about tonight. If he’d crossed the threshold on New Year’s Day, upstairs in Lalor’s, then tonight, he was closing the door behind him. Tonight he was leaving his childhood behind forever. Tonight he was going on his first operation as an IRA volunteer!