I think of Ryan, of the push and pull of our relationship. There was affection there once. Maybe it’s still there, buried somewhere. But now, I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to be summoned to his office again. To be berated like an errant child.

At five in the morning I send him a text. Tell him I’m taking a personal day. I need a personal day. Time and space to get my flat, and my head, together. He replies with a cursory ‘Okay.’

Chapter Seventeen

Ingrid

Wednesday, 23 October 2019

Liam and Bernie Doherty still live in the same house that they lived in twenty-five years ago. Their surviving children have grown up and moved out, starting their own families and building their own futures. But apart from the absence of bikes abandoned in the garden, or football boots left on the front step, there is very little about the exterior of the Doherty family home that differs from how I remember it looking all those years ago.

The same wooden fence lines the front garden, the same metal gate sways in the wind. I close it behind it me. I remember that being one of the things Ryan did teach me when I was a cub reporter. Show everyone respect – always close the garden gate after you. It’s a small gesture but it tends to work. People see you are more considerate.

Looking up towards the front door, I try to remember when I was last in this house. Was it that night? I try to remember did we carry our plastic bags to the front door of the Dohertys’ house looking for loot that evening. My memory is hazy.

Before I have time to reach the top of the path, the front door is pulled open and a tired-looking woman, her bobbed hair greying, looks out at me. There’s a soft smile on her lips as she welcomes me in – but I know that it’s not genuine. It’s an act. I imagine Bernie Doherty has become quite the expert at false smiles over the years. It’s not exactly a secret that she is out of her head on prescription medication most of the time. Diazepam and whatever other mood stabilisers she can get her hands on.

I remember hearing my mother saying that it was as if Bernie Doherty went into the ground with Kelly. The woman who was left behind was little more than a shell of the person she used to be.

‘Ingrid,’ she says, ‘c’mon in and go through to the living room. I’m just making a pot of tea.’

The fifth rule of journalism, after always close the gate, is never to refuse a cup of tea. It’s an easy conversation opener – it relaxes people.