‘We missed her when she left after a month. She said it was time to go home. We didn’t know then that Emmet would be following after her. It set off the rows with his father again. They were like two stags, fighting and clashing antlers. It was affecting his little brothers too. The tension was too much for us all. Dervla had gone travelling by then too, of course.

‘I didn’t blame him for going. At the last minute his cousin Orla decided she’d go too. It was catching, this idea of Australia being the Promised Land. It went great at first. Jeannie got him work in the bar with her. I’m sure I didn’t hear the half of what they got up to. But then he had that accident, Eliza. That fight. The worst phone call I’ve ever received. Every parent’s worst nightmare. I would have driven straight to the airport myself. But Hugh insisted it had to be him. He’d had an awful argument with him before he left. He was inconsolable. “What if Emmet dies? What if that argument is the last time we ever speak?” We could only afford to have one of us go. We had the other boys to look after. The pub.

‘So Hugh went. Jeannie collected him at the airport. They went straight to the hospital. Hugh phoned me after he’d seen him. He was crying. He barely recognised his own son, he said. Emmet’s face and his whole head was so swollen. His eyes just slits. His ear, the left side of his face. I never saw it, but I could imagine it. Every day, Hugh, Orla and Jeannie were taking turns to be with him, keeping vigil. Jeannie blamed herself. She’d sparked the row, she told Hugh. She had to make amends. She did everything she could. She even offered Hugh Emmet’s room in their share house. So he could save on hotel rooms. We didn’t know how long it would go on, you see.’

It was as if Sheila wasn’t talking to her any more.

‘Hugh sat there beside his son for hours every day. Telling him how much he loved him. Telling him all the things they used to do together when he was little. Treating the castle as if it was their own playground. All the matches he took him to. He told him that of course it didn’t matter if he never wanted to teach PE. If he wanted to do something else, he would support him, whatever he wanted to do, he just had to wake up, come back to us.