Or the time Stephen and Richard burst into the Rape Crisis Centre on Dorset Street and shouted, ‘WHO WANTS SOME?’ at the waiting girls.

Talkin’ ’bout my generation.

In April of sixth year Richard threw a graduation party at the house in Sandycove while Peter and Katherine were in Tenerife. In the pub beforehand Richard ended up inviting a bunch of people he’d never met before to the party. The house was wrecked. Tidying up the next day, Richard found a used condom next to his parents’ bed. Half his mother’s jewellery was missing. There were empty bottles everywhere and cigarette burns in the living-room carpet. Someone had upturned a bag of dog food in the utility room, which Peter Culhane, expecting a laugh every time, called the futility room. The freezer was unplugged and the wet linoleum was starting to curl at the edges. Richard ended up hiring professional cleaners and paid them with Peter’s credit card.

Remember, these are bright, respectable young men. They did these things mostly so that they could talk about them afterwards. This was what they talked about during nights of heavy drinking.

But these things happen to every rich kid in every city on earth. None of these stories offer an explanation for what happened to Conor. If you’re looking for explanations, this is the wrong place to start.

This is an Irish story. Remember that. You have to be Irish to understand why it matters, why it makes a difference.

What makes Richard and Stephen and Barry different from any other group of rich young men, in any other country in the world?

For one thing, they were Irish Catholics: a puritanical breed. Only one newspaper picked up on this, as far as I can see, and they buried it in a feature article that came out during the trial. The Culhanes and the O’Briens and the Foxes were practising Catholics. They went to Mass every Sunday morning. They went to confession every three months. They had the parish priest over for coffee mornings. And in the central corridor of Brookfield College, there is a seven-foot-high statue of the Virgin Mary, her palms open, her eyes downcast in sorrow. I’ve seen it. It’s right beside a trophy cabinet that holds ten consecutively dated Leinster Senior Cups, 1993–2003. Richard Culhane walked past the trophy cabinet and the sorrowful statue of the Virgin Mary every school day for six years.

When I start to wonder what the Culhanes do all day in the big white house on Inishfall, I think I know at least part of the answer. I think they pray.

Things they do look awful c-c-cold.

Peter Culhane consulted his credit card bill two weeks after he got back from Tenerife and told Richard he was grounded for a month. Richard was allowed out of the house once: to go to confession. He went to the chapel at Brookfield. Father Connelly absolved Richard of the mistake of the party and wished him good luck with the rugby.