I broke off for a moment. ‘Are you all right, Mr Huff?’

Tiny beads of sweat were forming on Mr Huff’s upper lip. He was ashen. And still the hands clinging to the bench …

‘Fine,’ he creaked.

‘Clifford told me that she was having an affair with one of them. Then with another. Two brothers. And it all got quite … quite complicated.’

‘Did Bran have any inkling?’

‘Oh yes. Bran knew.’

‘How did he react?’

‘It hurt him. But he was resigned to it. Because Orla was so ill. He saw it as a kind of … a way for Lonely to control that situation, to manage that situation at home which she couldn’t seem to … to …’

‘He confided in you?’

I nodded.

‘Did you like him?’

‘Very much. Everybody liked Bran. He was charming. Creative. But very quiet and shy. Almost grumpy. So when he confided in you, it felt like …’ I shrugged. ‘A great honour, I suppose.’

‘He relied on you,’ Mr Huff muttered.

‘He wanted me to be a real part of the family.’

Mr Huff scowled.

‘That day,’ I began, anxiously, ‘in the blackthorn …’

‘Did he lead the way? Into the tunnel?’

I nodded.

‘You followed him?’

I nodded again.

‘What did he want?’

‘We came to a small clearing. We talked there. In private. He wanted me to …us to …’

‘What?’

‘He wanted the three of us – me, him and Kalinda – to …’

‘A ménage à trois?’

I shook my head, then I nodded, pained.

‘And you said …?’

‘I said no. For Orla’s sake.’

‘And he said …?’

‘That it was for Orla, because she loved us all.’

‘You weren’t tempted?’

‘I was tempted.’

‘You liked Bran.’

‘Yes. But he loved Kalinda. He was just …’

‘Using you. As bait. For his wife.’

I winced.

‘And then Kimberly …’

I nodded.

‘She’d started to document …’

‘My mother was very ill with pneumonia.’

Mr Huff frowned.

‘I’d always had a difficult relationship with her. There was all this … this awful guilt.’

Mr Huff was staring at my chest again.

‘And one day Orla asked me if she might pray for her.’

‘Your mother?’

I nodded.

‘She understood, you see. Because she’d endured that guilt herself at some level. Over her own health – even her faith. How her faith was slowly destroying everything. How it consumed everything. How her fore-knowledge about that bomb had cast a dark shadow of guilt over them both.’

‘Weren’t they guilty, though?’

‘It was almost as if she was a kind of … like the control board in a telephone exchange. Everything came through her and was then sent back again. It’s difficult to explain. Or like … like Mrs Meadows’s bees. With that disease. It didn’t matter how many times the bees flew out to gather honey if when they returned to the hive …’

‘What did you say?’ Mr Huff asked.

‘Sorry?’

‘Your mother.’

‘I didn’t say anything. I stood up and I left the room. But she knew.’