‘I studied political sciences at college,’ Barr said. ‘I specialized in the Northern Irish conflict as part of my final year. After Dad died, we moved down to Galway. I’d always wanted to move back to the North again.’

Duggan glanced at Karen and Tony, shook his head lightly, then turned his attention to his plate again.

‘When I was old enough, my mum sent me back to live with Uncle Sean.’

‘My mother sent me to Scotland to keep me away from men like your uncle Sean,’ Tony offered with a rueful laugh.

‘I got into a bit of trouble at home,’ Barr admitted, smiling bashfully. ‘I broke into the local Garda station and stole a uniform.’

‘What?’ Karen spluttered as she chewed. ‘Why?’

‘To see if I could. They nearly went mad looking for it.’

Duggan chuckled. ‘Time was, I’d have done something similar myself,’ he said. ‘I remember stealing my teacher’s car when I was at school to run myself and some of the lads down for a riot. We drove back up afterwards and left it back in the staff car park and the dozy bastard never even knew it was gone.’

Barr smiled warmly, happy to be part of the sharing of tales of past glory.

‘But why did you get involved in all this?’ Karen asked. ‘How did you get politicised?’

Barr frowned. ‘I don’t know what you mean?’

‘She means why did you want to be part of something the rest of us have tried to forget,’ Tony explained.

‘Speak for yourself,’ Duggan muttered, spearing a piece of sausage on his fork then chewing it.

‘The war’s not over,’ Barr said. ‘Not as far as I’m concerned. There’s unfinished business.’

Karen looked at Tony and rolled her eyes, though whether at the earnestness of the young man’s comments or his actual views, Tony could not say.

‘The problem with that,’ Duggan said, as if stirring himself to speak, ‘is that the fuckers who sent us out to fight, they were playing a game all along, except we didn’t know. Some of them taking the King’s shilling while they did it,’ he said, then added, darkly, ‘That’s not changed.’

‘It wasn’t a game,’ Karen said, her voice soft, but with a steeliness Tony recalled even from three decades earlier. ‘Whatever you call it, it wasn’t remotely a game.’

‘Not to us,’ Duggan said. ‘But those fuckers that sent us out to kill or die, sitting in the pockets of our enemies the whole time. Or once they got into their pockets, sitting in power joking and laughing with the very fuckers they sent us out to fight in the first place.’

‘People change,’ Tony offered.

‘Bollocks,’ Duggan snapped. ‘People don’t change. They just become older and more extreme versions of themselves. Look at us. We’re no different now from what we were back then. Just more extreme versions of what we were.’

‘I’ve changed,’ Tony said.

‘No, you haven’t,’ Duggan said. ‘I remember asking you to get me a few thermometers, to see if you were right for what we needed. I could tell you were shitting yourself about doing it.’