Declan doesn’t switch his phone on. He just slides it into his pocket, pulls on his hat and leaves his flat – a gust of wind sending a swirling mass of autumnal leaves dancing around his feet.

It’s cold. But there’s a fire in his belly now. He knows exactly how he can show Ingrid just how wrong in the head Niall is. She won’t want anything to do with him when she sees what he has to show her.

Chapter Forty-Five

Ingrid

There is a pale blue Nissan Almera sitting in the car park at the top of Creggan Country Park. It’s the only car there, but I don’t want to park too close to it. I’m still on edge, and being here on this dark, grey and freezing morning doesn’t help.

The driver’s door opens and I breathe a sigh of relief when I see it’s Niall, carrying two cups of coffee. He is wrapped up against the elements, just as I am, and he grimaces as he looks up towards the sky.

I gesture at him to get into the passenger seat of my car. The least we can do is drink our coffee in relative comfort before we set off on our walk.

‘Great day for it,’ he says sarcastically as he hands me my coffee and sips from his own.

‘I’m not sure this is one of my better ideas,’ I say. ‘Maybe we should reschedule?’

‘Nonsense!’ Niall laughs. ‘Sure, it’s only a bit of rain. Did your mammy never tell you that you’re not made of sugar and you won’t melt?’

I smile at the phrase half the mothers in Derry must have used at one stage or another. ‘She did, but she’d also tell me not to be getting into cars with strange men or going out in a storm in case I catch my death of cold.’

‘Well, it’s a good thing I got in the car with you and not the other way around, and that I’m not a stranger. Besides, that’s hardly a storm,’ he laughs as we watch a tree bend and shake in the squall, ‘it’s practically a summer’s day for Derry.’

Niall is upbeat. Almost alarmingly so for 10 a.m. on a stormy Sunday morning when we are about to revisit the scene of one of his greatest childhood traumas. Perhaps the humour itself is a coping mechanism. Laugh it off. Make jokes. It’s how we all coped for decades in this part of the world. It’s how we still cope now.

I sip my coffee, let the caffeine wind its way into my veins.

‘I see the news about Jamesy is out,’ Niall says, cradling his coffee cup in his two hands, looking straight ahead of him.

‘Yes. Social media is particularly sewer-like this morning,’ I say.