From beginning to end, the coroner estimated the entire episode lasted no more than a few minutes. Five lives ended in hardly any time at all. Amidst the horror, one detail struck Sara as odd: the Webley revolver had been identified as being issued to an officer of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Sergeant Ronald Jennings, aged thirty-one. He had gone missing some weeks before and was presumed to have been the victim of an abduction by the IRA. The Ulster Gazette seemed to be local to the small city of Armagh, where Sergeant Jennings had lived, and the last article she read outlined how the hopes raised of finding the policeman had been dashed when searches at the farm revealed no trace of him or the car he’d been driving the evening of his disappearance. No explanation was ever offered for how the weapon came into the possession of George Jackson. As far as Sara could tell, the official line remained that Jennings had been taken by the IRA.

And what about little Mary Jackson? According to the police officers who interviewed her, as soon as the gunfire started, she fled the house and hid in the cowshed at the rear of the yard. She did not emerge until morning when she walked into the nearby village.

Walking at dawn, alone on these country roads. Sara imagined the child, terrified in the early light. And as an ageing woman, making the same walk in reverse, coming back here, more than sixty years later. Still terrified. Still alone.

Terrified. Alone.

Sara knew that feeling. And more, she was terrified of being alone. Perhaps she had always known that about herself but could never admit it.

She closed the newspaper and sat still for a time, aware of the cool around her, the spaces between the walls, the empty basement below. She was glad of the occasional noise from Tony’s work, the clatter and rattle of tools picked up and put down.

If she turned her head and leaned to the side, she would be able to see the red stains on the floor. But she would not look. She had seen too much, and now she wanted to be gone from here.

She found Tony upstairs in her bedroom, kneeling at a mains socket, the plate suspended from the wall by coloured wires. He looked up at her, eyes questioning. She became aware of the bed between them, the strange indecency of it. He dropped the wire cutters he’d been using and got to his feet.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Can you take me somewhere?” she asked.

20: Esther

20: Esther