‘We were married for more than fifty years, Emmet. You think it was sunshine and roses every day? You’re married yourself. You know it’s not. Five years before you went to Australia, there was another woman. A local woman. I’m not going to name her; you’d recognise her. I was wary of her. She liked Hugh. Too much. We fought about it. I asked him after he told me about Eliza. He swore that nothing ever happened between them. That he’d only been unfaithful to me once. With Jeannie.’

‘And you believed him?’

‘I had to.’ She nearly whispered the words. ‘I wanted to. Because he told me when he was dying, when he had only weeks to live. You think I wanted to spend those last days with him talking about all the times our marriage had gone off the rails? You think I was glad he told me? I wish he had never opened his mouth. I wish he had gone to his grave with that secret. I wish you had never gone to Australia, or London, never met that, that —’

He knew the word she was searching for. Whore. Tramp. ‘You can’t blame Jeannie, Ma. There were two of them.’ The image was still making him sick, but he had to say it. ‘Dad and Jeannie.’

‘I know that. I know what happened. And I know he must have kissed her first, he must have. He was a man in his forties, beside a pretty, sexy young woman. Of course it wouldn’t have been the other way around. Or maybe she had a crush on him, or maybe she thought it was fun, or maybe they were both so delirious on their euphoria, the champagne, the dope, I don’t know. But here we are, thirty-one years later, and the fruit of that union is here too. Aren’t we lucky?’

He reacted to the tone of her voice. ‘It’s not Eliza’s fault.’

‘It was Eliza’s decision to come looking for him.’

‘She wanted to know who her father was. She needed to know.’

‘She didn’t need to know. What difference does it make now she’s an adult?’

‘Every difference. It would always matter. I wanted to be a father, Ma. I wanted it badly. Dervla and I longed to be parents. And when I found out we couldn’t, because of me, that I was the reason we couldn’t have children of our own, you think I was only upset about that for a couple of days and then got over it? It’s one of the reasons we’re all here, isn’t it? To have families, bring up children, love them? And when it doesn’t happen, for whatever reason, it’s not easy. You have to mourn it, think about it, look at it for —’