Twenty minutes later, on my way out the door, I glimpsed a letter with my name on it in familiar handwriting, beaming from a pile of bills on the beige mat: Phyllis had written to me. I tucked it into my coat like a warm promise to read on the bus. It was a cold day, but the sky was a pale, icy blue and the sun bounced off the pavement. The leaves on the hedges shimmered. My coat was exactly thick enough to keep the wind from bothering my body, and I felt an uncomplicated joy in being alive.

Once I had sat down on the top deck, I scythed Phyllis’s envelope open with my thumb and pulled out the letter. It read:

Dear Jacky,

I am sorry but I have some terrible news. Titch has killed himself. He did it two days ago, hanged himself in his room. His poor mother came home and found him and called the ambulance but it was too late to save him, he had already passed away. He had been very down as the weekend before there was a pot of paint thrown over their front door and he said to his mother he was sure they were going to come and get him again. His mother is in an awful state I have been doing everything I can for her, getting her shopping and helping to sort out the arrangements. He is going to be buried on Monday, don’t you be tempted to come home, you have had enough trouble already, but we all know you will be thinking of him. He was awful fond of you as you know and never stopped asking how you were doing,

Love, Your Aunt Phyllis

Titch. I got off the bus at the next stop, and walked back to the Whartons’ with my heart beating very fast. Titch dead. The enormous shot of pain hit me like the injection of a drug.

My course of action suddenly seemed very clear, as if a hazy world had become a place of pure, sharp lines. Two things were about to happen. I was going to go back to Belfast and kill McGee, and when I had done that I would go to Titch’s grave and lay a wreath in front of his headstone. Then I would leave for good.

From the Whartons’ house, I called into work. The manager, Hassan, answered the phone, and I heard my own voice saying: ‘Hassan, I’m so sorry. My mother has just had a heart attack and the doctors say it’s very serious. I’ll have to go back to Ireland to see her, and I might be a week or so. I’m sorry about this but there’s nothing I can do.’ I sounded breathless as I spoke, but not for the reason I was telling Hassan.