It would never be OK.

Mamma. Matty lay in bed, the rain soft against the window, wanting her so badly. Or wanting a memory of her, from so long ago, before she hardened. The old lullabies learnt from Nonna, the heart drawn with spooling honey on toast. Walking along the road hand in hand, she naming everything in Italian, correcting Matty’s pronunciation. The words like little songs.

‘Why did you do it?’ Spoken so quietly, barely there. A question that had, until finding Joe’s note, been only for him. ‘Why did you die?’ Matty turned, curled into a ball even though it hurt. Whispered I’m sorry, over and over, the sibilance getting lost among the sound of the rain.

On the news, they were showing the clip of Tony Blair talking about the hand of history. Footage of the new cabinets meeting at Stormont, close-ups of pens on paper. There was an interview with someone who lived yards from the partition in Belfast, sanguinely optimistic.

‘Well,’ said Brigid, after the report had gone on to something about motorway development. Earlier, she’d talked about being a teenager and going out with a boy who lived in a remote farmhouse just over the border. They’d been stopped once, at night, and feared for their lives. ‘We’ll see.’

An occasional look at the map. Ros ros ros repeated like a gentle tide in Matty’s head. It was too far to cycle there. It seemed impossible to leave without knowing, without checking.

Joe had been silent since the attack. Replaced instead by Dale, his words coming back again and again. What’s your game? In front of my friend. The feeling of his fingers, gripping onto Matty’s neck. The look on his face as he stumbled backwards. How he drove away. How he died.

Halfway through the week, Brigid looked at the two twenty-pound notes stacked under the butter dish as she set plates down. ‘What’s this?’

‘I could get more.’ If Matty could only get out of the house.

‘What for?’

‘To pay you back.’

‘Ah, don’t be talking about that, now.’

‘It’s OK. I can pay. For anything I’m having.’

Brigid looked amused, and faintly offended. ‘Well, if I need your money, I’ll ask for it. All right?’

When they’d finished eating, Brigid leant down and pulled a newspaper out of her bag. ‘Brought you something. Page six.’

Matty stared at it with a hollowing feeling. Turned to it.

The report covered a third of a page. No photos.

‘Do you see what it says there?’

Bogland. Suspicious circumstances. Several lines of enquiry.

‘I don’t think you’re suspected,’ Brigid was saying, stacking the plates.

Dale Walsh, who had known criminal dealings.

‘Matty?’

A nod.

‘OK. I thought you’d want to see it.’