I said, “You’d already spotted him, yeah?”

“I had, yeah. God, yeah. You wouldn’t think . . .” Her fingers had slowed on the widget. “You wouldn’t think it now, but he was only gorgeous, your da was, back then. A load of curly hair on him, and those blue eyes, and the laugh; he’d a great laugh.”

We both glanced involuntarily out the kitchen door, towards the bedroom. Ma said, and you could still hear that the name used to taste like superfancy ice cream in her mouth, “Jimmy Mackey could’ve had his pick of any girl around.”

I gave her a little smile. “And he didn’t go straight for you?”

“I was a child, sure. I was fifteen when he started chasing after Tessie O’Byrne, and I wasn’t like these young ones nowadays that look twenty before they’re twelve; I’d no figure on me, no makeup, I hadn’t a clue . . . I used to try and catch his eye when I’d see him on my way to work in the morning, but he’d never look twice. He was mad on Tessie. And she liked him best of the lot.”

I had never heard any of this before, and I was willing to bet that Jackie hadn’t either, or she would have passed it on. Ma isn’t the let’s-all-share-our-feelings type; if I had asked her about this story a week earlier or later, I would have got nowhere. Kevin had left her fractured and peeled raw. You use what you’ve got. “So why did they break up?” I asked.

Ma’s mouth pursed up. “If you want to do that silver, do it properly. Get into the cracks. There’s no point if I’ll have to do the lot again after you.”

I said, “Sorry,” and upped the display of elbow grease. After a moment she said, “I’m not saying your da was a holy innocent. Tessie O’Byrne never had a bit of shame, but there was the pair of them in it.”

I waited, rubbing away. Ma caught my wrist and pulled it towards her to check the shine on the frame; then she gave a grudging little nod and let go. “That’s better. Things weren’t the same, back then. We had a bit of decency about us; we weren’t riding all round us just because that’s what they did on the telly.”

I inquired, “Da rode Tessie O’Byrne on the telly?”

That got me a clout on the arm. “No! Amn’t I telling you, if you’ll only listen to me? They were always wild, the pair of them. Made each other worse. One day in summer your da borrowed a car off a friend of his and drove Tessie down to Powerscourt on a Sunday afternoon, to see the waterfall. Only the car broke down, on the way back.”