I thought of all the things I should have said when I was halfway down the street; things like if I’d wanted to know more about my mother, I’d have gone looking; and did I fall asleep and wake up in an episode of EastEnders; and what gives you the right to lure me out here under false pretences and blow a giant hole in who I thought I was; and how dare you spring on me like it’s nothing that I had a sister I knew sweet fuck all about and, by the way, she topped herself too, just like her mother, so my all-new sibling is dead as well; and what am I to do with that; fast-forward through a non-existent relationship, do not pass Go, proceed directly to bereavement, speed mourning, is that what you fucking expect, is that what you want?

I said none of that, muttering instead something about fresh air, pushing my way past Sean – who was he to me now, some kind of relative? – slamming the door behind me, that at least, and talking to myself, walking as fast as I could, putting distance between them and me.

When I came to, I found myself on Pearse Road. For want of a better idea, I took a right on to Connolly. The streets around there are named for the executed signatories to the 1916 proclamation. Too injured to stand, James Connolly was shot by firing squad while strapped to a chair. He had had a daughter called Nora, I remembered.

All around me, it was Saturday afternoon. Cars drove by, and people went in and out of the corner shop, oblivious. I couldn’t bear the regularity, the din, of normal life but my legs wouldn’t carry me home. I thought about calling for a cab. And then I saw the sign for St Joseph’s, a short distance east of the roundabout.

I stumbled down the hill.

‘NO WOOD’, the sign by the entrance said, ‘STONE ONLY’. The cemetery was crammed with it, tall thin pointed slabs and high Celtic crosses, carved angels and obelisks, and decorative ironwork, rusted and vulnerable, footpaths and tracks snaking through the vastness of the place, and silver birch trees, their papery bark peeling like forgotten elegies. Most of the graves were old, recalling lost merchant fortunes and extinct surnames, all tightly packed, money and social status irrelevant now. The only open space was the smooth grassy mound, bordered by a rough stone retaining wall, that held the bodies of the Great Famine dead, fever and cholera victims and those who had starved. In the middle, on its own, was the grave of Father Mathew, who had preached temperance to the Catholic poor; fresh offerings set by his headstone.