‘The delay between leaving your place and going to Coughlan’s Quay isn’t conclusive of anything. Gill had been up all night, remember? He might have had a kip in the car. Or gone for breakfast – a fry-up in Tony’s Bistro? He delayed going to the Garda station. It doesn’t follow that he was having an assignation with a schoolgirl, surely?’

‘He phoned someone as he was leaving my house, Sadie,’ I said. ‘I didn’t hear who it was. I assumed initially that it was his security guard, or his assistant; possibly his solicitor. But what if it was Carmel he was talking to? Maybe he was arranging to meet her.’

‘I think your first impression was the right one, Finn, that it was probably his security guard or his assistant,’ Sadie said. ‘There was definitely someone with him in Cork this morning.’

‘How can you be sure? Did you see who it was?’

‘No, I didn’t see anyone, but whoever it was must have been the one doing the driving. When Gill was leaving, he rang and arranged to be collected outside the door.’

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Gill could still have met Carmel, though.’

‘With a witness in tow? I doubt it,’ Sadie said.

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

That was the truth. I didn’t know, not for sure, though I felt it in the way my head pounded. I couldn’t let the day go by without seeing Carmel and checking that she was safe. Lunchtime was past already. Was there a way of seeing her after school? I’d have to try to meet her at the gate. There was nothing else for it. But what if I missed her in the crowd? It was wet out – they’d be wearing hats or hoods and one girl looks much like another in the rain. Or what if she wasn’t there? What if she was with him?

And then I remembered that I had a way of contacting her, after all.

It was five days since I’d checked Twitter, and I wasn’t looking forward to it. There weren’t as many tweets as I’d feared. Social media had moved on and refocused their outrage several times over. I searched under #lawyerbitch. Within a minute I’d found Carmel: Carmel McMonagle, @CarmelaMcMocha, whose twin missions in life, according to her profile, were to locate and consume the ultimate mocha (#idreamofmocha) and to win an acting Oscar by the age of twenty-five (#onlytenyearstogo). She was so young.