‘Ah no,’ I said, ‘I think I’ll leave it to the professionals.’

I looked around the room. A large framed colour photograph of old McGee and his sons was on the windowsill. He was there in the centre, his heavy arms placed paternally around the shoulders of his two grown boys. They were all smiling, dressed in grey suits as if for a wedding, and Rocky’s collar was open with his wee dagger necklace on show. Someone from the family had brought this picture up to the home and stationed it there as permanent evidence of familial affection, indelible testimony to normality. At some point far in the future, perhaps, this image might harden into undisputed fact.

She saw me looking.

‘Him with his two boys,’ she said. ‘So sad. Don’t they all look handsome there. The younger one was killed a good few years ago. Terrible. Did you know him at all?’

‘Just to see around,’ I said, ‘I remember seeing him around.’

‘Such a pity.’

The silence between us on the matter widened. After a while she realised I wasn’t going to try and close it. Neither of us could think of anything more to say.

‘I think I’ll head on out now. It was good just to drop in and see him.’

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a wee cup of tea and a biscuit?’

‘Och no, I’ll let you get on with it. Thanks.’

He turned his head towards me suddenly as I left, and for a second I could have kidded myself that something in his eyes knew me. Trick of the light. The spoon was already back hovering dutifully at his mouth. I walked downstairs and into the reception area. There was a special code you had to press into a keypad to get out and it took me a wee while to get the hang of it. The weather had turned and when the door finally opened the cool drizzle on my face felt like a blessing.

Before I flew back to London I took the bus up to visit Titch’s grave in Roselawn cemetery in Belfast. Once I got off I had to walk for a while around the tidy boulevards of the dead before I found it, but in the end there it was. The black lettering on the mottled granite still looked sharp and fresh. It spelled out his too-short years and his full name, Rodney James Bell. No Titch – that was his joke name, and his ma wouldn’t let him die a joke. The grave was well tended, with a pot plant flowering in front of it. She still fusses after him, keeping him right even now.