Something happens to you when you grow up in the midst of bombings and shootings, with the possibility of someone’s agony always in the air like the coming of rain. It’s a secret that nobody really talks about: you get hardwired to the news.

The question of ‘will it happen to me?’ and ‘will it happen to anyone I love?’ and ‘will it happen to anyone I know?’ slowly becomes a reflex, almost a professional interest. You look at photographs of the aftermath of an explosion, say, in Iraq or Sarajevo, and you feel that sickened, sneaky tug of familiarity, the little quickening of recognition. They have it so much worse, you think, but still it’s something you already know, the intimacy of chaos.

In London, I still kept track of stuff at home. Delauncey’s didn’t get the Belfast Telegraph, so I sometimes read the Irish Times. In between its own stories of soaring house prices and political scandals it reported Northern news like a form letter tersely mentioning the latest doings of a regrettably delinquent cousin.

The day of Phyllis’s scheduled departure from Julie’s house was creeping nearer, and the Whartons had seemed okay with the notion of her visiting in exchange for a dollop more rent. As I boarded the packed bus home I decided to go to the travel agent’s in my break the following day and book her ticket. I found a cramped seat on the top deck, where the air smelled of damp woollen coats, and inched open my copy of the Irish Times. Two stories in, my eye fell on this:

KILLING CONNECTED TO INTERNAL LOYALIST FEUD, POLICE SAY

A man shot dead in the Sandy Row area of Belfast had close connections to loyalist paramilitaries, an RUC statement said yesterday. Witnesses said that Ronald ‘Rocky’ McGee, 28, was sitting in a parked car when he was approached on foot by two masked gunmen, one of whom fired several shots through the window of the driver’s seat, killing Mr McGee instantly. The men made their getaway in a nearby car which was later found burned out in a nearby estate. It is thought that the shooting is linked to an ongoing internal feud which has claimed several lives, beginning with the car bomb attack which killed Kenneth Bates, a father of two, in Bangor last January.

McGee was unmarried and lived alone in the Village area of South Belfast: he had a seven-year-old son by a previous relationship who lives with his former partner.

The victim’s Alsatian dog, which was in the back seat of the car, was unharmed after the attack.

I read it twice. I was shocked, I admit. It was such a stark form of resolution, the fact of his death.

I couldn’t deny the deluge of relief. If a desire for revenge had been warming in him regarding me or Phyllis it would never now get the chance to boil over. Just like that, a flick of fate from out of the blue, a wee tap from God’s finger, and I was rid of him.