‘You’re here in my front room on a Saturday afternoon,’ Ann said. ‘You’ve said nothing since you arrived that you couldn’t have said in a text message. So you’ve checked the festival’s child protection arrangements? So what. You hardly came here for a clap on the back. You came to see my daughter’s bedroom. Why?’

I rubbed a piece of my dress between my thumb and forefinger, avoided her eyes.

‘Talk, for God’s sake. Talk or go,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think you want to go.’

I looked at her.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t.’

‘Right,’ Ann said. ‘We’ll start again. Why are you here?’

I had to be careful. She was an intelligent woman, wouldn’t be fobbed off easily. I let go of my dress, pressed both my hands into my lap, felt the muscles in my thighs, drew strength from them. Tried to.

‘It’s got to do with something …’

My coat was next to me on the arm of the sofa. I could get up and walk out and never look back. Instead, I found myself telling the story I had never wanted to know.

‘My mother died.’

My voice sounded strange to me, had the hiss and crackle of an old record.

‘My birth mother. I’m adopted,’ I added.

‘How? How did she die?’

‘The river. Like your Deirdre.’

After a silence I continued.

‘When I was sixteen my adopted mother told me what had happened.’

‘And you came here because?’

‘I’m not really sure,’ I said.

I was finding it hard to swallow, a lump the size of a peach stone in my throat. Not crying, though. No fucking way was I crying.

And all the time, Ann was watching, assessing me and what I had said. Then she went to the door and spoke into the hallway.

‘You can come back now,’ she said.

Sean Carney came into the room again and Ann returned to her seat.

‘You were right,’ Ann said. ‘She knows nothing.’

I leapt to my feet.

‘What the hell is going on?’

‘I’m sorry, Finn,’ Sean said. ‘We haven’t been completely honest with you.’

‘We?’ Ann Carney said.

‘Me,’ Sean said. ‘I haven’t. You see, there was another reason I contacted you. It’s about your birth mother. After you, a few years after you, she had another baby she gave up for adoption, and we … Well, what I’m saying is, our Deirdre was your sister.’

6

For a time, the only sound in the room came from the fireplace, the coal and logs collapsing into ash. Then Sean Carney started talking again.