Another whack with the serving fork. I caught Carmel’s eye over Ma’s head, tapped my watch and said, “Custody agreement,” in an urgent undertone—I was pretty sure Carmel had watched a lot of movies in which callous ex-husbands tortured brave divorcées by playing fast and loose with custody agreements. Her eyes widened. I left her to explain the concept to Ma, grabbed Holly’s arm and her bag and steered her out of there, fast. As we hurried down the stairs (“Out, get out, if you hadn’t come back here upsetting everyone we’d still have your brother alive . . .”) I caught the even rhythm of Stephen’s voice above us, calm and steady, having a nice civilized chat with Shay.

Then we were out of Number 8, in nighttime and lamplight and silence. The hall door slammed behind us.

I got a huge lungful of cool damp evening air and said, “Sweet Jesus.” I would happily have killed someone for a cigarette.

Holly twitched her shoulder away from me and whipped her schoolbag out of my other hand.

“I’m sorry about all that back there. I really am. You shouldn’t have had to be there for that.”

Holly didn’t deign to answer, or even to look at me. She marched up the Place with her lips pressed shut and her chin at a mutinous angle that told me I was in big trouble as soon as we got ourselves some privacy. On Smith’s Road, three cars down from mine, I spotted Stephen’s, a pimped-out Toyota that he had clearly picked from the detective pool to harmonize with the environment. He had a good eye; I only caught it because of the elaborately casual guy slumped in the passenger seat, refusing to look my way. Stephen, like a good little Boy Scout, had come prepared for anything.

Holly flung herself into her booster seat and slammed the car door hard enough that it nearly came off the hinges. “Why do we have to go?”

She genuinely had no idea. She had left the Shay situation in Daddy’s capable hands; as far as she was concerned, that meant it was sorted, over and done with. One of my main ambitions had been for her to go through life, or at least a few more years of it, without discovering it didn’t work that way.

“Sweetheart,” I said. I didn’t start the car; I wasn’t sure I could drive. “Listen to me.”

“Dinner’s ready! We put plates for you and me!”

“I know. I wish we could have stayed, too.”

“So why—”

“You know that conversation you had with your uncle Shay? Just before I got there?”

Holly stopped moving. Her arms were still folded furiously across her chest, but her mind was racing, behind no expression at all, to work out what was going on. She said, “I guess.”