‘Your ma would be so proud,’ Molly said.

Jack cried.

‘Ah don’t cry, Granda,’ Juliet said, and she cried, too.

Molly elbowed him. ‘Now look what you’ve done.’

‘Ah Ma, mind me da,’ Grace said, and after that the call pretty much descended into everyone shouting at one another and talking at once. It was brilliant. It ended with Molly telling her granddaughter she’d see her for Christmas. Juliet pretended to be excited by the prospect of going home but she wasn’t. The idea scared her because back in Dublin her mother was really gone, more gone than she was anywhere in the States. Living away, Juliet could pretend that back home she was alive, surrounded by music and friends and family and all the things she loved. Juliet could pretend that one day soon she would see her again.

They didn’t go home for Christmas; the tour dates just kept coming in, making it impossible, and Juliet was relieved. Too soon. Her gran planned to come and see them but her doctor didn’t want her to travel after he diagnosed deep-vein thrombosis following her heart stent operation. It was fine. Juliet couldn’t imagine Molly Hayes squeezing her larger than life personality on board a bus too small to withstand it.

Then came the shattering news that Grace had the gene. Davey told her over dinner as she sat silently playing with the food on her plate, stabbing it with her fork and then moving it around in circles and figures of eight. He spoke to her about getting checked when she was old enough. It was too much to think about, so she automatically tucked that piece of information tightly away in the deepest recess of her brain to be opened at another time when she could cope.

The days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, and in the blink of an eye it was coming up to the anniversary of Rabbit’s death.

Two things happened on the day Davey broke the news to Juliet that they were going home to mark the occasion. The first was something small but it freaked her out. Trevor was showing her how to get an input level and then his hand brushed against her breast and he looked at her funny and carried on as though nothing had happened, and nothing really did happen except that it felt wrong. She found the input level and then Trevor’s wife face-timed and she said a quick goodbye as he blew a kiss at Ashley, their four-year-old baby girl.

Davey broke the news that Grace was having her operation the week after Rabbit’s first anniversary on a moving bus and over a ready meal.

‘We’re going,’ he said.

‘No.’

‘It’s time.’

‘Grace is having her operation the week after my ma’s anniversary?’

‘It just worked out that way Bun . . . iet,’ Davey said.

‘Will you stop calling me Buniet?’