‘Don’t you?’ I ask her. ‘Don’t you want to have this conversation instead of dancing around it all? We’re all walking on eggshells. You’ve not even asked me if I did it, Mum. Don’t you want to know if it was me? If I was the one who put the pillow over his head and pressed down until he stopped breathing?’

I feel the sharp sting of her hand across my cheek before I even register what is happening. My mother has never once, in all her life, lifted her hand to me. She never smacked me as a child. Even as a teenager when I was a little bitch and probably deserved a good slap, she would let me rage until I was spent, and then we would sit down and talk together.

The shock of feeling her strike me winds me. I gasp, stare at her, while I bring my own hand to my injured cheek, feel the heat of it rise.

I can see my mother’s gaze, steely and strong. She doesn’t look shocked that she hit me. She certainly doesn’t look sorry.

‘Ciara McKee, I never want to hear you talk that like again, do you understand?’

I stare and she steps closer to me, dropping her voice lower. It’s more menacing than her screaming at me could ever be.

‘I said, do you understand?’

I nod, willing the tears that sprung to my eyes to stay where they are and not to betray me by falling.

‘I don’t need to ask you if you did it because I know you, Ciara. You are my child and I know you could never have done something like that. You’re not capable of it, and even if you are too stubborn to admit it, I know you loved your father just as he loved you. Now, I want you to pull yourself together and help us all get through the next two days. We’ll do it your way. Closed house. Now let that be an end to this stupid conversation.’

She turned on her heel and walked away before I could say anything else. Before I could tell her that she was wrong. I did not love my father. It wasn’t something I was simply too stubborn to admit. I hated him.

And I did have bad bones in my body – a badness I’d maybe inherited from him. Or maybe, just maybe, it was more that I had a sense of justice. You couldn’t mess up people’s lives without any consequences. That was not how the world worked. Everyone had to learn that lesson, no matter how painful.

‘You’re awful pale-looking,’ Kathleen says.

We are sheltered together on the back porch of my mother’s house. I’m sucking on my e-cig but it’s still not quite hitting the mark. I remind myself it’s better than nothing.

Kathleen has ‘tapped’ a sneaky cigarette from Pauline, who swore she didn’t smoke but always has a box in her bag ‘for emergencies’. My aunt is clearly not an experienced smoker – she splutters and coughs as she tries to inhale the warm smoke.