It was while she was cleaning and contemplating that she’d chat with Father Frank; more often than not they’d take tea in the back kitchen next to the sacristy. Over the years they’d had many an existential conversation, argument and laugh in that back kitchen; they’d both even shed a few tears. He loved a gossip. He pretended he didn’t but he was all ears whenever she filled him in on the goings-on between one fella and another. He’d feign shock despite being unshockable. The things he heard in confession must have curled toes. Still, he was a good sport and a good friend, as it turned out. She missed him but not enough to go back there. Not now. Not AR – after Rabbit, Molly was a different woman. The moment her child died marked her. She got through the funeral by not thinking and only doing. Get up or get out. But afterwards when people had left, the noise died down and her child was well and truly gone, Molly’s thoughts roared back to life, dark thoughts exacerbated by Rabbit’s silence. Sorry.

AR the church represented everything unjust and unfair, and so Molly looked elsewhere to attain some peace. Voluntary work kept her going: Monday and Wednesday mornings sorting clothes for the local charity shop; Tuesday and Thursday afternoons dropping meals on wheels to the local auld dears who couldn’t cook for themselves; Friday nights she spent on the streets of Dublin doing a soup run. It was the only work that Jack had a problem with. ‘It’s night-time in Dublin city, Molly, and you’ll be walking the streets handing soup and sandwiches out to God knows who.’

‘I’m not alone, Jack, and anyway those poor creatures wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

‘It’s not the poor creatures in doorways I’m worried about. It’s all the other lunatics.’

‘Ah now, who’d be interested in tangling with an old woman?’ she asked.

‘It’s too dangerous, Molly,’ he said.

AR Molly didn’t care. Talking with the unfortunates took her mind off her own troubles. They seemed small by comparison to those of people ravaged by addiction or mental illness. She poured soup, and sooner or later she’d have them talking about the weather or politics or Kim Kardashian’s arse. Some were trickier characters than others.

‘Shove your sandwich, give us some drugs,’ one auld one in a wheelchair said to her.

‘Do I look like a dealer to you?’ Molly asked.

‘Me last one was about your age, although she made her grandkids do most of the work.’

‘Well, that’s not depressing at all,’ Molly said flatly.