Francie helped Davey tidy the room, returning everything to where it had been before he’d touched it. Finally he smoothed down the bed. He looked around, satisfied the room was as they’d found it – a museum, and now not just to Johnny but to Rabbit, too. Davey sat on the edge of the bed and closed his eyes.

‘You got your sign,’ Francie said.

‘I think I did.’

‘Good, no more fucking around.’

As they were leaving Mrs Faye appeared with a plastic bag filled with cupcakes. ‘Here, Davey, take these cupcakes from the mentally and physically disabled back to your mammy and tell her I’ll see her at the funeral.’

He took them. ‘Thanks, Mrs Faye.’ He hugged her.

‘A mad, mad world, isn’t it, son?’ she said, holding him tightly.

‘It is,’ he said, and when they let go he added, ‘I loved him too, you know.’

‘I do. Now go, we’ve all got a funeral to attend.’

Francie dropped Davey home. He could tell his mother was unhappy with him, as were Marjorie and Grace, but he didn’t care. Juliet was subdued; he immediately noticed her black eye.

‘What the . . .’

Molly put up her hands. ‘I made a mistake, now let’s move on.’ When Vincent and Silent Ed arrived and parked outside, Juliet spied them through the sitting room window with her good eye.

‘Is it time to say goodbye, Davey?’ she said.

‘It is, Bun— Juliet.’

‘What then?’

‘We’ll go to the crematorium and play music and some people will tell stories about your mother. It will be nice.’

‘Then they’ll burn her.’

‘Yes.’

‘And then what will happen?’

‘Well we’ll go to a hotel with friends and family—’

‘. . . to my ma?’

‘Oh, well, they’ll send us her ashes in a few weeks.’

‘What will we do with them?’

‘Whatever we want.’

‘But what?’

‘I don’t know, Bunny.’

She gave him a dirty look.

‘Let’s just get through today.’

‘OK,’ she said. She took his hand in hers and Davey Hayes’s thoughts turned from running away to making plans.

Chapter Twenty-One: Jack

Chapter Twenty-One

Jack

JACK SLEPT ON AND off for five hours. Two of those hours were spent in the attic, surrounded by diaries, old boxes, spiderwebs and dust. When he’d showered and changed into his suit, he spent a few minutes alone in the dining room with his daughter. He dragged a chair over to where she was laid out and he sat on it and took out one of his old diaries and showed it to her.

‘Look, Rabbit, it’s an old diary from the fifties. I used to write, too, you know. Not like you, of course, but for a time there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t catalogue in some fashion.’