‘Your father had it in his room.’ Norma looked uncertain for a minute, as if deciding on a course of action, and then opened it. Gordon used to pore over this album and he knew the photos off by heart. But now, all the photos, page after page, had been removed. In their place was a single photograph that Gordon had never seen. Norma propped up the album. Gordon looked at the photo: their families, the stone wall of a high lake, the impressive machinery. Him and Sam. Between them, with one hand on each boy’s shoulder, stood a bald man in a collared shirt and a pair of shorts. The sun caught the crease ironed down the centre of his thighs.

‘He even turned up on our holidays,’ Norma said, gazing at the photograph. ‘With documents for Ron to sign.’

Gordon met his mother’s eye. If he wasn’t mistaken, Norma looked at peace.

‘I know why Ron did what he did. Why it mattered so much.’ Norma nodded at the man in the ironed shorts. ‘Those men.’

‘Wow. No wonder I’m so fucked up.’

‘Well, that’s not exactly the way I would put it, but … Oh, darling. Life didn’t really turn out the way we wanted.’

He waited for her to start crying, but she was dry-eyed. Something had changed in Norma. A sad smile crossed her face. ‘I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,’ she said. ‘But at least I feel like I have the choice.’

Her gaze stayed on the photograph.

‘Since Owen, I don’t think your father lived a day when he wasn’t angry. Those men who did so well, he wanted them to pay. For getting away with it.’

‘With what, Mum?’

Norma looked at her son as if just now realising how little he had always known and how he never had a hope of catching on. ‘Darling, when you get to a certain age, it’s not important what “it” is. We paid, they didn’t. It really doesn’t matter what they did, only that it was so damned unfair.’ She rapped the photo album with her knuckles. ‘One thing he had was stubbornness. His anger could lie in wait forever, until it found its chance.’

Gordon thought: How long could my father’s anger have lain in wait if he knew that I killed Owen?

‘I am glad you’re out of The Lodge, darling. It’s the best thing for everyone. But we do love you, you know.’

Gordon thought: Would my mother still love me if she knew?

‘I guess so,’ he said. ‘Just … you have a strange way of showing it at times.’

‘Well, yes. That’s us, I suppose.’

Norma snapped the album shut, its claws closing on that photo Ron had taken with Tony’s camera, of all of them with Conal Abottemey in his ironed shorts, the impressive machinery and the high lake.