The Vaughans ran a bed and breakfast out of their big house on the other side of Ballina town. When Danny pulled into the pebbled drive, he saw the father’s car, and the older sister’s, but not Shauna’s or the mother’s. No guest vehicles either. A set of broad steps lined with potted plants led up to the front door of the house but Danny, as was custom, made his way around the side of the property, unhooked the iron ­eye-­latch of the gate, cut into a ­raw-­planked wooden fence, and followed a flagstone path into the back garden. The rear door of the house was framed by a pretty profusion of climbing ivy and cosily concealed as a magical door in a kids’ movie. Danny knocked.

‘The man himself,’ Matty Vaughan said, opening the door and standing back to let Danny enter the long, ­low-­ceilinged kitchen. Matty had an apron tied around him and was wielding a pair of tongs. The room was humid with cooking. Evie, Shauna’s older sister, was sitting on a stool by the counter, her ­two-­year-­old daughter Beth Anne up on her lap.

‘Well, Evie,’ Danny said.

‘Well,’ Evie muttered without looking up. She was propping Beth Anne on her knees, clutching the child’s midriff while attempting to ­one-­handedly write something down on the bright yellow square of a ­Post-­it note that was sliding around on the counter under the pressure of her pencil.

‘How’s tricks, Danny?’ Matty said, his face bright red from the heat, wrinkles of sweat on his temple.

‘Can’t complain,’ Danny said. ‘How’s business?’

Matty wiped his forehead with the back of his arm.

‘Ah, not a peep tonight, though we do have a couple of bookings pencilled in for tomorrow. You’re straight from work, by the looks of things?’

‘I am.’

‘How’s JJ?’

‘The same as ever. He said to say hello.’

‘I bet he did,’ Matty said with a smile. Every week Matty put Danny through a version of this same conversation, and every week Danny submitted a version of the same answers. Matty Vaughan used to teach maths and chemistry in Muredach’s. He had taught Danny until Danny left for England, and before that had taught Danny’s father and all Danny’s uncles. Since his retirement from teaching, Matty and his wife Marie had run the B&B ­full-­time. Though they were the kind of family that seemed well off, Danny figured they must have required, or at least welcomed, the income, for he could think of few things more disquieting than permitting a regular stream of strangers to traipse in and out of what was meant to be your house, even if it was a house as big as this one.

‘Shauna in?’ Danny asked.

‘Have you seen Shauna, Evie?’ Matty asked.