I didn’t, but said nothing. The way he was, he mightn’t have heard me anyway.

‘The nominations in January must have been the final straw for her,’ he continued. ‘It was the day following the announcement, on the 29th of January, that she left that note in her room and went to the river. Though at least she wasn’t around to see him winning, and the press coverage. All that glory, after what he did to my daughter. After what he did to my girl. I didn’t know what the note meant until he won, when I heard his acceptance speech. He was everywhere on the telly and radio for weeks and the clip from the speech was played over and over again and eventually I realised what Deirdre meant by the academy. If he hadn’t won, I might never have copped on.’

I had an inkling now who Sean was talking about, but it was so unimaginable, so unspeakable, that I needed to hear it from him.

‘Can you say his name, Sean? Can you say the name of the man you think it is?’

‘I don’t think. I know. It was Jeremy Gill,’ he said.

Biting my lip, I laid my pen on the table and sat back in my seat. Jeremy Gill, the most successful film-maker Ireland had ever produced, was an icon, a national hero. There were a few critically acclaimed Irish film directors, and one or two Oscars here and there, but he was in a different league, a Spielberg kind of league. Gill’s films made hundreds of millions of dollars. And they weren’t just popular, they were good. Last March, Seeing Things had won five Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. After all that, and the viral BBC chat show appearance, and the hour-long stateside television special, and the round of homecoming radio and TV interviews, and the front page newspaper and magazine photos, everyone in Ireland knew who he was. The pool of A-list celebrities is small in Ireland, and Gill was that rare thing: an enormous talent, and a massive international commercial success, who retained an appetite for frequent appearances on Irish TV and radio. People liked that he hadn’t forgotten where he came from. People liked Gill. I liked him.

I had been holding my breath. I sat forward again and wrote ‘J Gill?’ in my notebook, though it wasn’t a name I was likely to forget, and drew a box around it. Then I asked if I could photograph the suicide note with my phone. Sean blanched, but agreed. When I had finished, I gave back the note and fixed my eyes on him.

‘That’s some allegation, Sean Carney,’ I said. ‘Can you back it up?’

‘Are you saying you don’t believe me?’ he asked, too loudly.