‘Your room’s at the top of the stairs on the left,’ he said, and went inside carrying her sports bag.

Laura also knew that Peter and Katherine feared her visit. She was the last connection the Culhanes possessed to the events that had destroyed their comfort and renown. It was Richard who had invited her to the island. She knew she could expect no welcome from his parents.

The house was emptier than Laura had expected. The rooms had an air of neglect, as though the house had just been opened at the beginning of the summer. She waited, alone in the kitchen, for Richard to come down.

He looked like his old self when he arrived: the gelled hair, the Ben Sherman shirt, the crisply ironed cords. He was neatly shaven, too, and handsome – handsome as he had never been when Laura went to visit him in prison.

‘Hey,’ he said.

‘Hey,’ Laura said.

Peter and Katherine bustled into the kitchen. Katherine kissed Laura and asked how she was getting on in college. Peter put the kettle on.

A needling rain began to fall.

Peter served tea and they sat around the kitchen table, looking out at the stormy afternoon light.

Nobody knew what to say.

Eventually Richard asked Laura to come upstairs with him. They went into Richard’s room. He had not unpacked, and his suitcase lay under a pile of unwashed clothes.

Peter and Katherine sat in the conservatory. Katherine mixed them drinks, which they didn’t touch. They listened for sounds from the room upstairs but they heard nothing.

Richard and Laura were up there for an hour. I don’t know what they said. Laura wouldn’t tell me. And I know she never will.

This is the last lacuna in my story, the last event about which I can have no certain knowledge. What did Richard say to Laura? What did Laura say to Richard? I have no answers. Once again: I have no answers.

After an hour in Richard’s room Laura came downstairs. She was crying. Katherine and Peter stood in the kitchen while Laura sat at the table and cried. The silence went on and Richard did not come down. When a roll of thunder rumbled in the sky above the bay, the three people in the unlit country kitchen half-awoke, as from a dream of judgment.

Looking suddenly haggard, Peter touched Laura’s shoulder and said, ‘I’ll drive you back to the station.’

And so Laura fetched her bag and threw it in the boot of Peter’s car. They drove past low stone walls the colour of iron, past fields of sharp grass that grew from damp, sandy soil. The sky was low and troubled and the air was full of something cold. Peter dropped Laura at the station in Tralee.

‘Goodbye,’ he said.

‘Goodbye, Peter,’ Laura said.

They shook hands, and Peter drove away.

Time to go.

We are left with so many gaps, so many ambiguities, so many explanations left unfinished. We returned to our careers, of course – I am speaking now of myself and my parents, of Eileen and Brendan Harris and their last remaining son. We went back to work and college and we asked no more of the public world, having been refused so much for so long. Laura went back to university. The others – all those people I have touched on, all those people so crucial to my story, so fruitful of confusion and distress – resumed the running of the country or the running of their lives. They continued. They got on with it.