Could he make a clean breast of it? Would she even comprehend what he was telling her? What did she know of such obscenities?

Yet he wanted to spill it out, lighten the load. Perhaps she wouldn’t blame him. Perhaps a woman would understand, in ways that his own daidí couldn’t. Could he tell her without sullying her beauty, destroying her innocence? Without ruining this tender union they had? What would she make of him?

‘You’ll think the worst of me,’ he said.

‘Why would I do that?’

Because of the nature of sin, Joe thought.

He leant up on his elbow. Her face was close to his. She smiled.

‘I will never think the worst of you.’ She ran her finger across her throat. ‘I promise,’ she said. ‘Ich schwöre bei meinem Leben. On my life.’

The sunlight brought out the colour of her eyes, flecks of green and gold, the light down on her skin.

‘Will you lie back the way you were,’ Joe said. He didn’t want her to see his face, couldn’t bear her to see his shame. He didn’t know how to start. Or where. With the gates of St Xavier’s? The loneliness of the dormitory?

‘I was only young,’ he began. Searching for the words. ‘And small. For my age. And there was this priest, Father Ciarán–’ A clumsy man, with an over-ripe face and a dirty cassock. ‘He asked me to pray with him in his cell, after the others had gone to sleep.’

Joe could feel the tap on his shoulder as he lay under the blankets, the soft, Follow me, Joe.

‘Then, one night–’ Joe’s breath came and went in short, shallow puffs. ‘He took off his clothes.’ His voice was cracking and he swallowed hard to make it whole again. ‘He made me take off mine.’

Trude lay beside him. She didn’t move, though he could hear her silent breaths.

‘I was a child.’ Tears had welled up, were rolling down his cheeks. ‘What did I know?’

He paused, sniffed. Trude on her back, eyes gazing at the clear blue sky. ‘Go on,’ she said. Her voice soft and gentle. ‘Did you think it strange?’

‘I thought people would laugh at me if I said anything.’

He wiped his eye. Trude wasn’t laughing. She was listening, giving him strength to go on.

‘One night, he grabbed my wrist and clamped my palm over his–’ he swallowed, put a hand to his face, thumb and finger pressing into his eyes. He couldn’t say the word, not to Trude. He whispered, hoped she couldn’t hear. ‘Down there.’

Goosebumps rippled over his skin. ‘Father Ciarán called it his special–’ He stopped. Sobbed. ‘His special grace.’

‘You were very innocent,’ Trude said.