I followed her into the kitchen. A square pine table with four matching chairs took up one corner. In the other, an old television kept watch over two well-worn armchairs. This was where they spent most of their time, I realised, the place they tried to keep going. The front room, with all the photographs, was where they went when the trying got too hard.

Ann was at the sink, letting the tap run, filling a glass, handing it to me. I drank it off quickly and gave it back. She filled it again.

‘Come,’ she said.

We sat quietly together at the table and I sipped at my water and it felt like I didn’t have to say or do anything.

‘Is there anything you’d like to ask?’ Ann said after a while. ‘About the adoption or Deirdre growing up, what she was like? I have the family albums in the top of that high cupboard over there. It would be no bother to take them down and—’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘Maybe I’ll take you up on that offer some day. I think I have as much as I can handle for now.’

Ann nodded.

‘You need time,’ she said.

‘Time doesn’t always heal, in my experience,’ I said.

‘Nor mine,’ she said.

‘Especially where a wrong’s been done.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘People talk about closure. Whatever it means, we never got it. We were left with so many unanswered questions. And now this Jeremy Gill thing that Sean has dreamt up. He’s been looking for an excuse to contact you for months. Gill’s visit for the festival gave it to him.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

Ann looked at me.

‘You don’t?’ she asked. ‘Well, you wouldn’t, but Finn, I know him. Whatever he says, this is a lot less about Jeremy Gill and a lot more about Sean wanting to meet you, wanting to have a link to Deirdre to—’

‘I thought it was because he wanted to warn people about the danger,’ I said.

‘It’s that too,’ Ann said. ‘And he has some notion as well that because you’re a solicitor you’ll find some legal way of punishing Gill. If it was Gill. But so what. Whether it’s him or someone else, they got away with it, and there’s nothing we can do.’

‘The thing is,’ I said. ‘Maybe there is.’

‘Look,’ I went on. ‘If Sean’s hunch is right, Gill deserves to pay for what he did. There’s no chance of bringing a criminal prosecution. As you know, the DPP is the person who decides whether or not somebody should be charged. Here, because the main witness, Deirdre, is deceased, no prosecution is possible.’

‘So that’s it, then,’ Ann said. ‘Same as what the guards told Sean.’