‘He was born twelve hours after his father died,’ she finished. ‘I was allowed to keep him for forty-eight hours and in that time I gave him a history of our lives. It’s what Etienne had done with Violette the day she was born.’

She looked at Bish. ‘Samuel Grazier was the middle man. I still haven’t quite worked out whether I hate him or appreciate what he did. It was his job to make sure the victims’ families were kept up to date on everything. Getting bodies returned. Arrests. That sort of thing. He got close to the Conlons. It was Grazier who made the exchange of letters between Anna and me possible. He made the adoption happen. He took Eddie out of my arms . . .’

Bish couldn’t help thinking what a pair he and Grazier were. Removing children from their mother.

‘I had one stipulation,’ she said, finding her voice again. ‘It was that neither Eddie nor the public could know who his birth family were. Anna agreed, but it didn’t stop her visiting me once a month. She brought picture books and a tape recorder and I’d spend hours reading the books into the tape, which she’d play back to our son. Eddie may have thought it was a stranger reading those books at the time, but the first thing he said to me today was “I know your voice.” ’

She was fighting tears. ‘Anna continued to visit me right up to a few months before her death. It was a deep friendship that I will never forget. My fear now is that John Conlon is a man of few words and that darling boy seems to be the exact opposite. I can’t bear the idea of Eddie living in silence when he was so used to talking all the time with his mother. That’s what will wake me now at the witching hour.’

The witching hour. How well he knew it.

To Bish, these people’s stories made sense of a cruel world. The story of Etienne LeBrac’s watch. And the story of two sons.

‘What else do you think of?’ he asked. ‘At your witching hour.’

She seemed almost to welcome the question. ‘All the things I miss. Holding my daughter. All the talks we could have had when she came home from school. I miss my mother’s belly laugh, and the way my little brother would drop to his knees when he scored a goal. I miss talking to my best friend for hours on the phone, and I miss not having seen her four children grow up. I miss my husband’s lazy smile and I miss the sex and I miss wearing high-heeled shoes and beautiful things, and I miss using my brain and I miss the pride people used to feel in me . . .’ Her shoulders slumped with a fatigue that was doubtless etched in her bones. It made Bish want to hold her. Tell her he understood.