‘You came with us to Kilmeray. Back in ’99. You were the documentary filmmaker?’

‘That’s right.’ He sounds only a little surprised that I’m asking.

‘So.’ I swallow and hope he doesn’t hear it. ‘You were a filmmaker then … as well as an actor.’ I deliberately don’t make it sound like a question, and close my eyes against his answer.

This time the pause is so long I wonder – almost hope – that we’ve been cut off. ‘No. I wasn’t.’

My stomach squeezes, and the ballast inside it lurches. The only thing I manage to say is ‘Mum’, choked and hot.

‘She tried for a long time to drum up interest, you see,’ he says, oblivious. ‘But there was none. Your mum, she was always so sure about you – both of you – you were only a wee kid but you must remember. Man, all those parties, and you never picked the wrong card once. It was incredible. She just wanted the world to see it too. Plus, you know how she was about all those psychic TV shows. I think she hoped if we filmed it, someone would want to buy it.’

‘Are you saying that she organised it all? That you didn’t fund it? That it was nothing to do with you?’

‘Well, I agreed to it, of course. But she paid me. She paid all of us. I don’t know where she got the money from, perhaps she’d been saving it. It just meant so much to her, you know? It always did.’

And I know he’s telling the truth. I remember saying to Kelly how desperate the filmmaker must have been. How much he’d gambled on the unreliability of parish records, and the spectacle of it. Of me. Only he hadn’t been the desperate one after all. And I remember that night with Will in the Harbour View Bar; telling him why I was so sure Mum hadn’t been lying: How did she know that Robert Reid’s real name was Andrew MacNeil?

‘How did Mum know someone called Andrew MacNeil had lived on Kilmeray?’

This time, the pause is long enough that I become almost panicky with a need to fill it.

‘Because you told her.’

That old memory, so sharp. The squeeze of my fists; the hoarseness of my throat; the hotness of my tears. Mum holding my hands and looking at me with that light, that smile.

‘Viv was special, Maggie,’ he says. ‘And so were you. She just wanted the rest of the world to see it.’

‘Thanks.’ And I’ve hung up before he can say goodbye.

I lean against the phone box. Think of all those times I’d sat in bed as the dawn crept in under my curtains. Mum leaning close in the light of the bedside lamp, close enough that I could smell the rose hand cream on her skin.

Hold still. Nearly done. There! All out.

How radiant she’d always looked at those times. How beautifully alive as she smiled and stroked my hair. I’m so proud of you, baby. Did you see how impressed they all were! Well done!