Upstairs I could hear bathtub water draining and Holly chattering away, with the occasional comment from Olivia. I wanted, so suddenly and hard it almost knocked me over, to run up there and wrap my arms around the pair of them, tumble the whole three of us into Liv’s and my double bed the way I used to on Sunday afternoons, stay there shushing and laughing while Dermo rang the doorbell and worked himself into a chinless huff and Audi’d off into the sunset, order avalanches of takeaway food and stay there all weekend and deep into next week. For a second I almost lost my mind and gave it a try.

It took Holly a while to bring the conversation around to current events. Over dinner she told me about the hip-hop class, with full demonstrations and plenty of out-of-breath commentary; afterwards she got a start on her homework, with a lot less complaining than usual, and then curled up tight against me on the sofa to watch Hannah Montana. She was sucking on a strand of hair, which she hadn’t done in a while, and I could feel her thinking.

I didn’t push her. It wasn’t until she was tucked up in bed, with my arm around her and her hot milk all drunk and her bedtime story read, that she said, “Daddy.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“Are you going to get married?”

What the hell? “No, sweetie. Not a chance. Being married to your mammy was plenty for me. What put that into your head?”

“Do you have a girlfriend?”

Ma, it had to be; probably something about divorce and no remarrying in the Church. “Nope. I told you that last week, remember?”

Holly thought that over. “That girl Rosie who died,” she said. “The one you knew before I was born.”

“What about her?”

“Was she your girlfriend?”

“Yep, she was. I hadn’t met your mammy yet.”

“Were you going to marry her?”

“That was the plan, yeah.”

Blink. Her eyebrows, fine as brushstrokes, were pulled tight together; she was still concentrating hard. “Why didn’t you?”

“Rosie died before we could get that far.”

“But you said you didn’t even know she died, till now.”

“That’s right. I thought she’d dumped me.”

“Why didn’t you know?”

I said, “One day she just disappeared. She left behind a note saying she was moving to England, and I found it and figured it meant she was dumping me. It turns out I had that wrong.”

Holly said, “Daddy.”

“Yep.”

“Did somebody kill her?”