They’d been passing the bank when two kids had slid by them on skateboards, the rattling of the wheels on stone echoing off the city walls to their left. The noise had caused Tony to start and he assumed the sudden movement from Ann to his right-hand side was the same. But then she hit the ground.

Initially, he thought one of the youths had struck her, but there was no blood; not until she began to writhe, as if her body were surging with current, her head striking off the brickwork beneath it. Then the blood began to seep, haloing her skull, badging her hair.

Tony had knelt beside her, his hands holding hers, his jacket hastily placed beneath her head, shouting for someone to call an ambulance, his own phone useless in his jacket pocket as he tried to control the seizure.

He’d sat in the ambulance with her, her hands in his, telling her it would be OK, that they’d be home soon. She couldn’t remember the event afterwards. She could recall only the first song of the concert and nothing thereafter until the ambulance ride.

‘I’m going to wash that man…’ she sang, sleepily, lying on the stretcher. He placed his hand to the side of her face, marked her with her own blood from his fingers in so doing.

The doctor told them, the following week, that the trip to Lough Derg was impractical. There was no guarantee that she wouldn’t take more seizures (indeed, she did with increasing frequency) and walking on jagged stones was not the ideal situation for her under such circumstances.

Instead, she’d listed other plans, places she wanted to revisit. Fahan beach, Griannan fort, Inch Island. They’d done all three in one day, Tony driving from one location to the next. In Fahan they sat in the car, the winter chill outside too much for Ann to bear. She watched the tide, listened to the gentle breathing of the earth with each wave that washed the beach clear, wept for all she would miss.

‘That’s a tough one,’ Duggan admitted, drawing Tony once more to the present.

‘She was a tough one,’ Tony said. ‘She refused treatment in the end.’

Karen’s look caught him off guard, a mixture of sympathy and regret, he thought.

‘Why?’

‘She was told she was going to die either way. Treatment might give her another month or two but with no quality of life.’

She’d slipped quietly away in the hospice, her passing ultimately a relief after the horrendous final days she’d endured.

‘Brave woman,’ Karen said.