When the verdicts had been handed down, Eileen and Brendan Harris were asked to provide what was called a Victim Impact Statement. On the day that Brendan Harris read this statement to the court, the vestibule and the car park outside were filled to overflowing with journalists and camera crews and ‘members of the public’. In his three-page statement, Brendan Harris insisted, as he had insisted all along, that his son had been murdered, and that the convictions for violent disorder that had been brought against Barry Fox, Stephen O’Brien and Richard Culhane were laughably inadequate. He also stressed that an unknown number of other young men had not come forward to confess their involvement in Conor’s death. For he and his wife, Brendan said, sleep had become a thing of the past. Their lives had been irrevocably altered. They wanted not vengeance, but, simply, justice. They sought redress for their son’s untimely death. That this had not proved possible, Brendan Harris felt sure, would be for the Harrises a source of unending sorrow.

Outside the court a gaggle of protesters shouted, ‘There’s no justice!’ as Richard and Barry and Stephen were bundled into the windowless van.

Peter Mason and Gerald Clinch were already organizing their appeals.

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Laura visited Richard while he was in prison, not as some tabloid Bride of Frankenstein (and there were newspapers that took this angle), but rather as a sort of Florence Nightingale figure, which by then I think Laura had decided she was. Our generation are dying to be victims or carers. Laura thought she was both. But she thought Richard was the bigger victim. She thought he deserved compassion from somebody.

I could address, at this juncture, the question of Laura’s loyalty. But what would be the point? She stuck with Richard. That’s what happened. Why bother to puzzle over her motives?

Clodagh Finnegan didn’t stick with Stephen O’Brien. In the week that followed the arrests she went around telling people how fucking weird it was that her boyfriend had been, like, arrested for murder. When it became clear that Stephen and the other two boys would go to trial for their involvement in Conor’s death, Clodagh stopped replying to Steve’s texts and phone calls. Eventually she rang him and said, ‘Eh, I don’t think this is working out, Steve-o. You know what I mean, like.’

Barry Fox’s girlfriend – they had never been particularly serious – didn’t last much longer.

And they lost their friends. At Brookfield it had always been skirting impropriety to raise the subject of the Harry’s Niteclub crew. Now that the boys had been found guilty, everybody clammed up. Nobody recalled aloud Richard’s triumphs on the pitch. Nobody brought up any stories involving Barry or Steve. The silence – voluntarily assumed, of course – was total. The silence was so total that even Richard and Stephen and Barry were aware of it, as they settled down on their sagging cots for their first night in gaol. They knew that nobody from Brookfield would ever speak their names out loud again. They knew that that beautiful world, the world of nights out in Blackrock, the world of Senior Cup teams and perfect houses and tolerant parents, was closed to them forever.