‘Ann’s aunt, Maura, well, I suppose she raised him as a bitch would a pup, and he has no idea. I don’t think I should ever mention it?’

‘No,’ we both said, loudly.

There wasn’t a peep out of Shane and his student nurses had come in, surprised and unsure what to do with us all, attempted to cover Jane, who resisted, and then left again in a hurry.

‘Two weeks after Patrick arrived in Clifden –’ Jane clasped her hands and her eyes shut down tight as Margaret Rose rubbed her shoulders – ‘Ann hung herself –’ she paused – ‘inside the laundry.’

Margaret blessed herself three times.

‘Oh, Jane, I’m so terribly sorry.’

‘And right where all the other girls could see her,’ Jane continued, ‘with a thin yellow apron string, and it started cutting her wiry neck. I have this terrible dream that her head falls off completely and rolls to my feet.’ And she spun around to Margaret Rose and started screaming, ‘Fuck them, you know, FUCK THEM FUCK THEM FUCK THEM.’

Ann Hegarty never took the trip again home to Clifden, to see her son creeping down low in a woollen duffel coat with big peg buttons, searching for a shell at Dog’s Bay, and Hegs would remain a man boy, because that’s the way sometimes, when you are constantly searching the past.

‘They think she’s buried out Headford way near some castle ruins, but who knows? I don’t trust a word they say, in the next breath they’ll say that she’s not dead at all …’ Jane said.

‘Or that the records burned down in a fire. That’s always what they’ll say. Or the nuns are too old now ta be upset. But what ’bout all the families too? They were in on it,’ Margaret Rose said.

‘Fire starters. Every convent in the country seemed to have one,’ I said. ‘Sure, there’s hundreds buried everywhere, thrown into bogs and over walls, some say they’re in that awful tank in Tuam, sure, what do you even say?’

‘Jesus. That gives me nightmares. Ta think that was going on when I was young. Is that really a septic tank?’ Margaret Rose asked me, blessing herself again.

‘It would appear to be,’ I said, quietly and unsure.

‘Indeed,’ Jane continued, ‘others say other things. You see, mostly people won’t speak about it at all. Maybe that’s easier? For the best?’

‘But ma’god,’ Margaret Rose said, ever so slowly, ‘a septic tank, far poor children, babies, and those poor boys that found that tank.’

‘Some say they were only in that tank because it was a safe burial place,’ Jane said, ‘but I know what they thought of women, we should make no mistake of that.’ Her hands were shaking.

‘So do I,’ said Margaret Rose, oddly clutching her sheets. ‘Never trust them, I amn’t the best with the words, so never rang in ta the radio, but I’d have liked ta, but so many wans come on, telling us their story. Awful. But still, ma’God’s ma’God. And he won’na see us wrong. None of this is God’s work. ’Tis the work of the Devil. And we let the Devil control us. I knows it.’