I barely remembered my birth mother, though I had lived with her full-time until I was four and started school, until the teachers had noticed me and made a report of neglect to the Southern Health Board. The assessments had started, then, though I didn’t learn the lingo until later when I started going to court for my job: the temporary care orders, the supervised access, the foster placement with the Fitzpatricks that had become permanent when I was nine, old enough to be told that my birth mother had gone to heaven, old enough to go to the funeral; not old enough to be told everything.

That came later, when I turned sixteen and started asking about my history, and talking about looking for my father. Except that there wasn’t a father to look for: that section on the original birth certificate had been left blank, my adopted mother Doreen had said. She had told me about my birth mother’s suicide at the same time. And one other thing: that my birth mother had been drunk when she threw herself in the river.

It would have been more of a surprise if she had been sober. She had been on and off the drink numerous times by then. I wouldn’t see her for ages, and then she’d reappear, back from holiday or hospital or whatever her euphemism for rehab was at the time. It must have been when she was away on one of those extended absences that she had had Deirdre and given her up for adoption.

On my way up Barrack Street, through wooden blind slats and net curtains and clear glass, I glimpsed other people’s lives, like a succession of short films. In one of them, a group of friends sat easily together on a sofa. A TV was on and they were half watching it, half talking to each other, checking their phones, too, but sharing the same space. In another, two men in sportswear stood in a kitchen, drinking bottles of beer, trading stories, laughing.

I was starving and exhausted but kept walking, past the turn-off for my house, as far as La Tana. When it comes to emotional eating, sometimes only pizza will do.

Back home, I went straight to my ground floor study and sat at my desk. The room was small and cramped, piled high with books and the prints and posters I’d bothered to get framed but hadn’t bothered to hang up yet. Somewhere underneath everything there was a futon I’d used for guests, before I’d been able to afford a bed for the spare room, also on the ground floor, along with a laundry and storage space and a small shower room. I’m a ‘keep it just in case’ person; not so severe that I’m going to end up on a TV show, but a hoarder nonetheless.