‘I still have the wee cottage,’ he explained to Birdie. ‘Just the three rooms. You walk in and there’s the kitchen. I have an old car seat for an armchair and sure I don’t take much care of it. And off to the right is me bedroom. And up to the left, behind the chimney there’s the room me mother died in. I don’t go in there much now. It’s all junk, Birdie. Junk. You know yourself. A lifetime of junk.’

But apparently the pair of boys had a fry. Two pans of it. Eggs. Bacon. Liver and kidneys. Mushrooms. Rashers. Even onions.

‘A feast, Birdie. A feast. Who would have thought?’

All washed down with tea and followed by a plate of bread and jam. And then Hughie said he was going for a walk on the hills. And Gussie said he’d like to go with him.

So they both headed out. Put on old black coats and peaked caps and wellingtons and pushed up the hill behind the house like crows waddling towards a bucket of corn.

The mountain rising ahead of them and the clear sky promising a long, dry, frosty night.

‘But he never spoke a word to me,’ Hughie said.

The dog was running round in circles, listening for foxes, and watching and following badger trails. Then they came to a well. And to a holly bush. To an old shed with horse tackle that Hughie had never seen before in all the years he had travelled that path. They came to the top of the ridge where they could see into Mayo. In the long grass they saw the shadow of a badger but they stood their ground.

The badger was still. Listening. He was only three metres away from them. Hungry and frightened. It was a time of year when the females get pregnant. There’s lots for the males to do. Keep her dry and warm and change the bedding. Hughie moved. The badger moved.

‘Dangerous fuckers betimes,’ Hughie explained. ‘If they take a grip of your leg, they’d never let go. You’d have to break a stick. Only way to get them to release their jaws. The snap of the stick. They think it’s the bone breaking. Won’t let go till then. Fuckers.

‘And I swear to Christ,’ Hughie said, ‘the poor boy never said a word. Not a thing. We just walked and walked.’

They walked farther up the mountain, Gussie picking his footsteps carefully, and staying a few paces behind the boss man, who edged forward with a fat stick smacking the ground on either side. And at the top of the slope they came to a ridge, a shinbone as it’s called, along which they could walk on dry stony ground and view the lowlands of Roscommon to their right, and Mayo to their left.

‘I pointed out Ballinasloe to him,’ said Hughie. ‘In the far distance. And I says, that’s where your mammy is.’

They couldn’t go any farther.