Her thoughts are coming at her in a rush, messy and confused. It’s like suddenly finding herself at the centre of a swarm of bees – noise and panic in her head. How did Greg find out about this before she did? How could she have missed such a thing?

‘I saw him.’

‘When? Where?’

All these single-word questions she’s firing at him. What? How? When? Where? Like a child, or someone in shock. And she realizes that she is in shock.

‘On the street, down by the crescent. A few days ago –’

‘A few days ago?’ There’s a shrillness in her voice and she tries to rein it in. ‘You’ve known this for a few days and you never told me?’

She stares at him, waiting for his response, but his jaw is set in the fixed, stubborn way that makes her want to scream at him. ‘What if I’d met him? What if I’d turned a corner and bumped into him?’

‘That’s why I’m telling you now, in case,’ he explains, some passion of his own leaking into his voice.

She draws her gaze away from him and stares blankly out of her window. The sun is still beating down even though it’s evening, heat making the streets unrecognizable – little seating areas outside cafés and pubs thronged with people in summer clothes. Grey buildings, smog-stained brickwork, all of it transformed by the brightness of the glare. It’s like a foreign city, she thinks, Athens or Madrid instead of Dublin, everything unfamiliar.

‘It could just be temporary,’ Greg is saying. ‘You know – some sort of parole. Day release or something.’

‘But how do we know? How do we find out?’

A gnawing feeling is growing deep in her gut. She’d skipped lunch – her appetite diminished by the heat – and now regrets it.

‘I don’t know. I suppose I could go over there, talk to him –’

‘Don’t you dare!’

‘It’s not that I have any desire to talk to the man but –’

‘I mean it.’

They have stopped at the traffic lights and she watches the tram trundle past in front of them, wonders how she will get through this event, making small-talk with strangers, while carrying this news inside her. Anton is out. Then she feels the weight and pressure of Greg’s hand upon her knee.

‘Hil,’ he says again, in a soft voice that makes her suddenly tearful. She can feel his concerned gaze on her face, but can’t bring herself to look at him.

Instead, she glances at her reflection in the sun-visor mirror. Eyelashes sticky with mascara, beneath them her pale, pale eyes.

She flips the sun-visor closed, slots the mascara wand back into its tube. ‘You can drive home later,’ she tells him, in a flat voice. ‘I need a drink.’

They walk into a storm of noise.