‘You could pour my tea now, please.’ Her voice was gentle.

He leant forward and poured tea into her cup. She nodded as she watched the darkness of the liquid falling from the spout.

‘I suppose you could say that as a family we were gutted by history.’

He pushed the mug over towards her.

‘What an obnoxious thought.’

He gave a little grunting laugh at the world she had used.

‘There is no way you could possibly understand.’

‘You never know your luck.’

‘I know my luck.’

‘You met Caitlin.’

‘Dancing?’ She held her hands out towards him and smiled. Dressed in black, always in black.

He shook his head to dislodge the memory. ‘That was her bad luck.’

‘I don’t suppose she thought so. Shove over the milk, would you?’

His hand was shaking as he pushed the jug across the table. She poured some into her tea and watched it swirl for a moment. ‘You seem to have enjoyed great mutual happiness.’

‘She might have been alive now. If,’ he raised his voice, ‘if only … if she hadn’t … if I … she … if …’

‘Great mutual happiness doesn’t come all that often to people. Perhaps it would be better if you were to think of that, rather than keep saying “if”.’

‘People who haven’t suffered find it easy to give advice.’

‘That’s quite rude, you know. Quite an uncaring attitude to have towards other people.’

‘The child, my child, our child had six wee teeth. I think from time to time about that.’

‘Moya? Is that what you said her name was?’

‘Yes. I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude. I have been rude to so many people over the last while. I say things without thinking – well, sometimes that’s not true. Sometimes I mean to be rude. Vicious. I …’ He suddenly smiled at her, a charming and quite lively smile. ‘I was feeding her one day. We had this little silver spoon that my mother had given her, and as I put it into her mouth I heard this tiny clink. I looked into her mouth and there was this wee pearly ridge just pushing up through her lower gum. It sounds so stupid to say, but I had seldom been so excited in my life. I felt stupid with excitement. As you may have gathered, I am not given to great displays of emotion. I yelled for Caitlin and we kept putting the spoon in and in and in to the child’s mouth just to hear the clink over and over again.’

There was a long silence between them. Pansy came in from the kitchen and settled herself down beside Lar, her head on his knee. He scratched at the top of her head with a finger.

‘Good dog,’ he said eventually.

‘Why did you say gutted by history?’

‘It seems to me to be true. We are a gutless people, not just my family, who don’t speak, but the whole damn lot of us. We allowed ourselves to be collectively bullied. That’s pretty gutless, you must admit. Shaming, when you think about it. We subscribed seriously to the “whatever you say, say nothing” philosophy. We didn’t raise our voices against the unreasonable behaviour of the Unionists and now we’re having a problem raising our voices against the unreasonable behaviour of the Republicans. Our voices disappeared years ago with our guts, out our backsides. Sorry.’