Turning back to my desk, I did a last run through my pending work, and dictated instructions for Tina Daly, my secretary of six years. Twenty-eight, whip smart and totally reliable, but quirky enough to want to stay working for me rather than one of the other solicitors, she had been bored rigid during the short time she had spent in the Commercial Department. Like me, Tina liked variety.

There was just enough time for me to have lunch before going to the Carney house. I thought about picking up a salad and coffee from the Rocket Man, but I needed time to think, and the trouble with Cork was that I’d be bound to bump into someone I knew, either there or on the walk over. I decided to go home and reheat the remains of the butternut squash soup I’d made during the week. As I trekked up the hill, every step I took told me that I had no space in my head, or my life, for the Carneys and their tragic story, and that I should cancel the appointment, say what I had to say on the phone, and not go to see them at all.

I went anyway. I told myself it was courtesy. Truthfully, though, I wanted to know more. About Jeremy Gill? Sure. But mostly I wanted to know about Deirdre, about how she had come to decide that dying was better than living.

The house in Turners Cross was a modest semi-detached two-storey, sixty or seventy years old, with a Ford Focus parked outside. I rang the bell. Within seconds, Sean Carney opened the door.

‘Thanks for coming, Miss Fitzpatrick, Finola, thanks a million. You don’t know how much it means.’

‘Call me Finn, Sean,’ I said, ‘Only my boss calls me Finola.’

The front room was spotless, though it was less of a living space and more of a shrine, with photographs of Deirdre on every wall and surface. There she was, making her communion, being presented with a medal for some kind of sporting event, baby and toddler photos, but none of her as an adult, nothing that showed her beyond mid-teens.

They wanted to remember the good times.

‘I don’t know where herself has got to, give me a minute,’ Sean said.

As he was getting up to look, the door opened and a stern, grey-faced woman came in, carrying a tray. She wore a chunky brown fisherman’s-rib wool jumper tucked inside a sludgy tweed skirt. The clothes looked ten, or twenty, years old, and the skirt gaped at the waist. She hadn’t always been this thin.

‘I thought you might like a cup of tea,’ Ann Carney said.