“I just need somewhere to stay,” she said. “Just for tonight. I’m sorry to bring you into this, but I don’t know anyone else here.”

“I’m happy to do it,” he said, putting the van in gear and pulling out of the forecourt. “I’m not sure how my mother’s going to feel about it, mind you.”

They spoke little as Tony drove towards Lurgan, country roads giving way to a stream of dual carriageways punctuated by roundabouts and housing estates. The town itself was jammed with vehicles, pavements lined with schoolchildren waiting to cross at one of the never-ending sets of traffic lights. Graffiti on the walls as Tony cut through housing developments, three-letter acronyms, most of which Sara didn’t recognise. Some streets with Union flags dragging from the lamp posts, red, white, and blue; others with Irish tricolours, green, white, and orange. Small houses clustered in rows, some well-tended, others going to ruin.

These were the streets she had seen on the news as she grew up, not the peaceful country lane where she now lived, but these dense gatherings of houses with barely room for Tony’s van to navigate. It was these streets where she saw youths throwing bricks and petrol bombs at police in riot gear, children growing up in battlegrounds, raised to hate and be hated.

His mother’s home was a three-bedroom redbrick in a cul-de-sac of near identical houses that faced a fenced-off railway track. She waited in her doorway, watching as Tony pulled up at the kerbside. A small woman of late middle-age, distrust in her gaze. She flicked ash from a cigarette and coughed into a tissue.

Sara followed Tony through the gate and along the path.

“Ma, this is Sara,” he said.

“You can call me Nuala,” the woman said, stubbing out the cigarette against the brickwork before tucking the butt into the packet. “I don’t need trouble brought to my door, but Antonio says you need help, so I’ll not turn you away. You’ll take something to eat.”

It was an instruction, not a question, and thirty minutes later Sara sat at the table in Nuala’s kitchen, a plate of chips, beans and fish fingers in front of both her and Tony. The sight and the smell brought a memory of her grandparents’ home on a council estate back in England, a place her own mother seemed ashamed to come from. She ate in silence and gratitude, not realising how hungry she’d been until her plate was cleared. Sara insisted on doing the dishes, Tony drying, and once everything was put away, Nuala announced she was going to bed, leaving them both alone at the table.

“You want a beer?” Tony asked.