She sits on the sofa and stares at her pictures. Cornagore 1966. The beach. Four little boys staring at the camera lens. Gussie at the edge, all lanky and frowning. That’s where it all started. And perhaps that is why he went back? Perhaps that is why he spent half the year pacing the beach like someone lost from a wrecked ship.

Gussie was a shy child who could not tie his shoelaces or make a knot in his tie. He was a dribbler and a gazer. His shirts and jumpers were layered with days of dried egg, tomato ketchup, tea and milk, and green snot from his nose, which he cleaned by wiping on the sleeve of his jumper.

It was two o’clock in the afternoon. A warm August afternoon. Gussie was in a house in Cornagore with a few other boys. All students at the summer school. And the woman of the house announced to the five little scholars that she was going to the village for sausages and would return at five o’clock to make their tea. She quizzed them through the door of the bedroom. She was meticulous at not intruding on their privacy, but she persisted at the door for a long while. Surely they had language classes in the afternoon? No. Or maybe dancing classes or singing classes? No. But the summer school could hardly be closed down for the day, she persisted. The landlady knew that. There must be something on for the students in the afternoon.

Long pause.

Imagine the landlady standing outside the little bedroom where the five boys were stretched on their bunk beds, and maybe she’s thinking to herself that this is a little fishy. Very well then, she suggested, they might like to walk with her into the village. If they met one of the teachers, they could check. That didn’t go down too well. Not an option at all, they said. In fact they couldn’t. Because they all had sick tummies. Everybody? Yes. From what? Who knows? Ice pops! And some had headaches. From walking in the wind, because it’s windier in Connemara beside the ocean than anywhere else in Ireland. And now they declared that they all had permission from the teachers to take the afternoon off as long as they stayed in bed. The landlady gave up. It was almost half-two by now and she had a long walk for her sausages.

And as regards the little boys in their bedroom, the rest is a tale of innocence unveiled. But for Gussie, it was the terrible shock of a first kiss. And the landlady was no eejit. She reported everything to the teachers and the teachers reported it back to the parents. Which is how Birdie found out. And how it had lodged like a stone in her chest for years, when she’d look at him growing up. Imagine Gussie brushing his lips against the other boys’ lips. Doing things that probably returned to haunt him for years.