But the Carneys had been absolutely sure that Eoghan MacGiolla, though he hadn’t been teaching at her school at the time she was there, had known Deirdre from the area. I made a note: I’d have to arrange another chat with him when I got back to Cork.

I looked again at the convent, at the rows and rows of windows, lighting rooms long vacant of people and purpose. I saw what looked like a grey figure watching the scene from a window on the first floor. Was it Sister Bernadette? I waved, but got no response.

Maybe it was a trick of the light.

23

Eighty euros poorer, I drove in the direction of Phibsboro. Some friends and I had shared a house there, on Geraldine Street, when we’d been students at the Law Society. We used to go the Basin, a quiet green place with a pond and a few benches, to loll about after summer lectures. Only ten minutes’ walk from O’Connell Street, the park felt like a local secret.

Seeing a space on the left side of Wickstead Street, the address Sister Bernadette had given me, I pulled in, making sure to text my parking fee before I did anything else. I wasn’t going to get clamped twice in one day. Then I got out of the car and started knocking on doors.

I had no story concocted for my meeting with the Macbrides. If I started out on a lie, I could never regain their trust. But I had to be discreet: I couldn’t assume that Rhona had told her parents anything about what had happened with Gill, if anything had. I was keeping the question open as a formality, a sop to my legal training, even though, by now, I was sure that Jeremy Gill had attacked both Deirdre and Rhona. Sister Bernadette couldn’t understand Rhona’s change of behaviour and decision to move schools, but to me it made perfect sense. If Gill had sexually assaulted Rhona, it was only natural that she would have wanted to move away from the memories she had of him, and of the filming, at the school.

Number 17 Wickstead Street was a two-storey Victorian red-brick, typical of the area, with steps up to a holly-green front door, and a well-tended front garden. The woman who lived three houses down had said she was ‘nearly sure’ that this was Macbrides’. But the door was answered by a child, a sturdy fair-haired boy of nine or ten.

‘Hello,’ I said.

‘Hiya,’ the boy said.

‘Is this where Thomas Macbride lives?’

‘That’s my grandad. But he’s called Tommy, not Thomas. And he’s not here.’

‘Oh, I see. Is there anyone else home maybe?’

‘My granny.’

‘Could I talk to her, please?’

He turned and roared into the house.

‘Granny!’

‘All right, all right, Shane,’ a voice said. ‘No need to tell the whole street.’