This was the moment when they no longer knew who or what they would become.

Picture them in their kitchens, with their orange juice or coffee or tea. Their mothers have turned the radio on, as a matter of course, to listen to the news as they make breakfast for their kids.

It’s the top story on Morning Ireland. A young man dies after being beaten to death outside a nightclub in Blackrock. The young man has been identified as Conor Harris of Donnybrook, County Dublin. Gardaí are investigating reports that Conor became involved in a fracas moments before he was attacked.

‘Isn’t that one of your friends, Richard?’

But Richard says nothing, because there is nothing he can say.

33

What did Richard Culhane do when he heard that Conor Harris was dead? He went out into the back garden of the house in Sandycove and looked at his father’s swimming pool. His hair was still thatched and tepid from the shower. He had barely slept. It was an overcast morning and rain was gently stippling the glossy surface of the pool. Richard looked into the water and put his hands in his pockets and thought, I’m fucked.

Christ, we killed him. We fucking killed him.

(We fucking showed that little cunt.)

For several minutes Richard felt bottomlessly calm. He watched the canted corner of a flagstone fill with rain. His mind, so far as he could remember afterwards, was completely blank. He studied the patterns made by the sheeted drizzle on the surface of the pool. He giggled a little, he said. Hysterical laughter, is how some people diagnosed this giggle later on. A nervous reaction.

Some people weren’t so kind.

‘And what were you thinking, Mr Culhane?’ the prosecution would ask about the moment Richard went out to look at the pool.

Richard blinked. ‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing at all.’

‘I can’t remember,’ Richard said, ‘but I don’t think I was thinking anything at all.’

‘But you giggled.’

Richard, in the witness box, blushed and lowered his head. He had mentioned the giggling once, during a garda interrogation, and it had made the papers. It had become a feature of the case. But the interrogations had exhausted him. In desperation he had told the truth about that moment, which is that he giggled.

What should he have done, he wondered? What had people expected him to do? Drop to his knees? Burst into tears? Scream at the heavens?

Pray?

When Richard was fourteen the family dog, Snowball, got stuck behind the shed at the end of the garden and tore his paw on a rusty nail. Katherine drove Richard and Snowball to the vet in Dun Laoghaire. When Richard got out of the car he saw that Snowball had bled all over his white O’Neills tracksuit bottoms. The vet disinfected Snowball’s paw and wrapped it in bandages. As the vet worked, Snowball squirmed and yelped in distress. And Richard stood to one side and giggled helplessly, even though he knew his dog was in pain, even though he knew he himself was really very upset. He giggled.