‘I’m her sister. I can’t say the news didn’t come as a relief. We knew Mary Ellen was dead. Four years is too long to go without finding her, though. It’s near destroyed Mammy.’

‘That’s Nora, isn’t it?’ Michael asked. ‘Have you more family?’

‘No, it’s just us two. Our brother’s in England and Daddy died ten years ago. Farming accident. At least he was spared all this. Come in, then. I suppose you’ll be wanting tea?’

‘Just water will be grand,’ Laura said, following the woman as she strode purposefully into the ramshackle old farmhouse. The heat was intensifying as they approached midday and neither detective believed the perceived wisdom that drinking hot tea could regulate the body’s temperature.

Elizabeth brought them through to a small parlour at the rear of the house, just off the kitchen.

The room they entered was dark and gloomy. It had one small window, divided in half by a lace net curtain and faced onto a semi-enclosed yard. A couple of fat bluebottles buzzed lazily against the cracked pane of glass.

A wooden dresser was heaped with old crockery and photos. Beside it, an older woman sat on a hard-backed chair, hands clasped on her breast, rosary beads entwined in her fingers. She wore a pale green blouse stretched across an ample bosom. Legs mapped by varicose veins poked out from under a matching green skirt.

She opened her eyes and made to stand as they entered the parlour.

‘You’re grand, Mrs Lehane,’ Laura said. ‘Not on our account, please. We’re very sorry about your daughter.’

Nora sniffed and bowed her head.

Michael took a seat beside Laura, echoing her words, receiving as little acknowledgement.

Elizabeth sat with her mother, their elbows touching, bodies leaning towards each other almost defensively.

‘I knew she was dead,’ Nora said, resignedly. ‘I felt it. In here.’ She pointed at her chest, where her heart lay broken. ‘Even when they said she wasn’t. They said she’d run off. But a mother knows. When you bring a life into this world, you’re bound, you see. There’s a thread that connects you to your child. They’re part of you, your flesh and your blood, forever. Until you die or they do. You feel light when they’re happy, you feel heavy when they’re sad. Ask any woman. I think that’s what hurt the most – when the other mothers in the village tried to tell me she’d just left. Like I wouldn’t have known.’

Nora closed her eyes and shuddered. Any stoicism she’d been trying to project deserted her.

The pain in the room was suffocating.

‘Did she … did she suffer?’ Elizabeth sounded almost embarrassed to have to ask for information. ‘The guards who came up didn’t know anything. They just said her body had been found and we wouldn’t be needed to identify her.’