It was a rotten, foggy day, biting cold in the early January of 1985, when he left. I’d had Matthew take Serena over to Auntie Eileen’s for the morning so she wouldn’t see his bag all packed and ready by the door. It wasn’t three months since the IRA had bombed the Grand in Brighton trying to do for Margaret Thatcher so it would be no picnic being an Irishman in England.

He didn’t look back at me or his weeping mother, bereft where she stood on the street. As soon as he was out of sight a weight lifted off my shoulders and settled itself neatly on my heart. I put my arm around Bridie and told her we’d both be okay and she cried harder.

Serena was a different kettle of fish. A monster who could not be placated and no amount of cajoling and pleading with her helped for nearly a fortnight. She stood at the half-door every day until she nearly fell with tiredness, her little face pinched and white until she was thrown down with a fever. That seemed to burn her back to life and she emerged quieter and rather forlorn, but at least back with us.

After three weeks a huge parcel landed from England; it was addressed to his mother and in it was a teddy bear bigger than Serena and a letter saying he was alright and would send money soon. I didn’t get a mention. Serena called the bear Bosco and set about covering him in leaves and muck and snot and food because she wouldn’t leave him out of her hand even for a minute.

She marched up and down outside the kitchen window talking to him while Bridie burned the dinner and I washed the clothes and fed the cows and every other bloody animal with a mouth, and I worried that they were both lonely.

The radio brought us all the bad news we could ever need at home and abroad. There was an IRA mortar attack on an RUC base in Newry, County Down in February and nine RUC officers were killed and thirty-seven wounded. In May four more were killed in County Armagh by a remote-controlled IRA bomb and so every Catholic family would suffer a bit more low-level intimidation every day.

The little house wilted around us. I had always loved the bones of John’s Farm, the place I ran to when my mother hit the roof and every child under it, but John’s absence drew up to the table every time we sat down and made us weary, watchful. The talk was of him, our ears were peeled for news of further bombs on the mainland, any incidents that might make life even harder for an Irish boy who stuck out of the crowd.