I’m lying on my bed with my eyes closed when the doorbell rings, and it’s Cora I think of first. Oh God. Is that her? This is what I get for ignoring her text. What does she know? What is she going to ask me and what am I going to say? Lightheaded, I pull myself off the bed, psyching myself up to answer the door. To face her. But Emily gets there first.

‘Mum?’ she calls up the stairs. ‘The police are here.’

The police? Why on earth would the police— I freeze, my hand on the bedroom door handle.

Cora’s told them.

I think I’m going to be sick.

There are two of them. Detective Sergeant McCarthy and Detective Garda Walsh. Without asking why they’re here, I lead them through to the living room and close the door, telling a confused Emily to keep Ben and Sophie in the kitchen.

I gesture for them to sit, my hand shaking as I do. The one called McCarthy takes a seat on the bigger of the two sofas. A wisp of hair has escaped her bun, and she pushes it behind her ear. The garda called Walsh stands by the fireplace. White noise whirrs in my ears as I wait for them to speak. What am I going to tell Mark? Tell the kids? How did I think this would all stay secret for ever? A child died. A life ended. It was always going to come out. Dizzy now, I reach behind me, feeling for the seat of the smaller couch, and lower myself on to it.

‘Mrs Stedman, are you OK?’ McCarthy asks, half rising from the sofa. ‘Are you ill?’

I shake my head.

‘OK then. We’re here about a woman called Cora O’Brien,’ McCarthy says, settling back on the couch.

I force a small nod.

‘I’m afraid to inform you that Ms O’Brien has been involved in a fatal accident.’

‘What?’

‘I’m very sorry.’

‘I don’t— What happened?’

‘An accident on a railway line, I’m afraid.’ McCarthy tries to hide her grimace, but I see it. Dear God. The incident on the DART tracks. Cora.

‘Ms O’Brien was on her way to work in the city centre early this morning. The platform was crowded with rush-hour commuters and just as the train was pulling into the station, she was propelled forward in the surge, and knocked on to the tracks.’ She sounds robotic almost, as though she has spoken these same words a number of times today. ‘There was no way for the driver to do anything, I’m afraid.’

Oh God, poor Cora. Tears well up.

‘Was she … did she—’ I can’t finish the sentence.

‘She would have more than likely died instantly,’ McCarthy says.

I nod, gripping the couch cushion, rocking back and forth. For a moment, nobody says anything, and it’s in that silence that the next thought arrives.

Why are they telling me this?

I wasn’t close to Cora. Even without parents or siblings or children, there must be others they should be informing? But I can’t think how to ask that. So I sit and rock and wait.