Fred was still on guard outside Valerie’s room. Grateful, she smiled at him.

‘You OK, Mai?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘But I’m still standing and that’s something.’

‘There’s something I need to tell you and then I’m going home,’ he said. She knew instantly that whatever it was she wouldn’t like it. What now? I don’t know if I can take much more. She followed him back into the kitchen. The house was quiet. Lynn had left an hour earlier to make dinner for her husband; her mother and child were sleeping. It was late. It had been a long day.

He sat opposite her at the kitchen table. ‘Do you remember the last time Danny came around here?’ he asked.

As if she could forget. ‘He put a brick through the window and told me he could just stroll in and kill me anytime. I believed him.’

‘Do you remember what you said to your mother that night?’

At first she couldn’t. It had been a long time ago and she wondered why he was bringing it up.

‘You said you’d have to go back to him. Do you remember?’

She nodded. Yes, of course. ‘I thought if I didn’t go back we’d all be dead. Then he disappeared.’

‘I know, Mai.’

‘I know you know.’

‘No. I mean, I know what he did, I know what was said and I know what he was capable of. Your ma called me the very next morning. She told me everything and she asked for my help. And I know why he disappeared.’

Maisie couldn’t believe her ears. ‘What did you do?’

Fred didn’t look her in the eye. ‘I frightened him.’

‘What did you do to him, Fred?’ she said, with growing unease.

‘I followed him from the pub one night. I hit him on the back of the head, knocked him out and put him in the boot of his car. I drove him to the Dublin Mountains, Maisie. I made him dig a grave.’

‘Jesus Christ almighty.’

‘For two hours I made him think he was gonna die. He made a run for it. I caught him and I had a bat. I beat him so badly I broke his leg in two places.’

Impossible. Fred is gentle. Danny is the animal.

‘I drove the car and stopped about a mile from the hospital. I opened the boot, and before I walked away, I warned him that if he ever mentioned my name or if he ever went near you again I had a grave waiting for him in the Dublin Mountains.’

She felt sick.