He had told my daughter all about the English girl that he had fallen for, hook, line and sinker, in London when he was just a boy. The English girl that I had never quite measured up to. She was the loveliest creature he had ever met, kind and decent and good. And funny, so funny, they had shared so many laughs. They had what? I closed the wardrobe door on my hand and bit back the yelp! She was a Protestant girl so they would have to get married in a registry office. John didn’t mind not being married in the eyes of God. He had sort of given up on God after his pal Shimmie Tollund was kneecapped for no reason.

Catherine’s parents would go mad but she didn’t care a jot because he was what she wanted. It was only about six weeks to the wedding when he thought there was something wrong one night. Her head was exploding; they both held on to it to try and keep it together, but the pain made her scream until she couldn’t scream any more.

The ambulance hadn’t come, bogged down in James Callaghan’s Winter of Discontent. She was trembling in the bed; he had held her close to make her feel less scared but she was still terrified and wide-eyed, looking straight at him, as she died in his arms. He didn’t know what it was that took her away so suddenly. The doctors didn’t tell him anything because he wasn’t next of kin.

He’d only known about the baby for two months, the best two months he had ever lived. He would finally have someone with his own blood running in their veins, the start of a family at last. My heart split open. Catherine and him had lists of names; she’d had time to cast on the stitches to knit a white wool blanket. His hope was that it would be a little girl – Bridie would have loved a little girl – but she had stayed with her mother, both of them gone in a flash as the pigeons circled outside.

Her parents wouldn’t talk to him, wouldn’t tell him anything after they found out that their daughter was shacked up with a Papist and a spit-on-the-ground Irishman to boot, living in sin. English people were still raw years after the Birmingham pub bombings. They didn’t care that he wasn’t involved, that she hadn’t been alone at the end, that Catherine had been loved. He was banned from the funeral for want of a piece of paper saying that he was the husband. He hadn’t been given the chance to put either of them to rest.