‘If they want me out, I’ve given them enough ammo. I’ve been acting way outside my job description, taking on a case without authority, a case that by any standards is unwinnable. Been behaving more like a detective than a lawyer. They’ll get the procedures right next time, and if – when – they do, I’ll be out on my ear. And unemployable. Nobody’s going to give a job to hashtag lawyerbitch, the woman who disrespected Ireland’s uncrowned king. I could lose everything I’ve worked for, Sadie. No job, no mortgage payments. I can only barely afford my house as it is.’

‘Any chance of suing for … anything?’

‘Not yet, not that I can see. There’s been a heck of a lot of vulgar abuse, but nothing defamatory so far. Gill has said nothing publicly, and neither has the Film Festival, it’s just been the disappointed, angry kids, upset because I deprived them of contact with their hero. They don’t know why, or what my suspicions are, and I can’t tell them. I’m only able to tell you because I got the Carneys’ authority.’

I paused.

‘I still can’t understand why they didn’t do something about it.’

‘Who?’

‘The Carneys. They knew Deirdre had been raped and they told no one, not even a doctor. For fuck sake, she was their daughter.’

‘Finn, you know that the vast majority of sex crimes – between two-thirds and four-fifths, possibly even more than that – are never reported. And of those cases that are reported, most aren’t prosecuted and even fewer reach a successful conviction. There could be any number of reasons they didn’t pursue it at the time.’

‘I know, I know, but it’s so wrong.’

‘Which bit?’

‘All of it. I keep thinking about Deirdre. How awful it must have been for her … if only she’d been able to do something. I’m not blaming her for not, not at all, I just wish that she could have. For her, for herself. For nobody else.’

‘None of us knows how we’d react in similar circumstances. All the system can do is make it as easy as possible for victims to make complaints and, when they do, ensure that adequate supports are in place.’

‘Are there adequate supports?’

‘No – but there’s a greater understanding of the issues than there was back then.’

‘It was 1998, Sadie, it wasn’t a hundred years ago.’

‘The last Magdalene Laundry, where so-called fallen women were more or less imprisoned for the crime of being sexually active, closed in 1996. The Supreme Court case, where the Attorney General of this state took action to try to prevent a pregnant suicidal fourteen-year-old from leaving the country for an abortion, was in 1992. The nineties in Ireland might as well have been a hundred years ago. Why are you surprised the poor girl didn’t report it?’