Did she feel guilty? Of course. How could she talk to Tom, kiss him, go to bed with him, when her head was filled with thoughts of another man? She hadn’t known she was capable of such deceit. The problem was, she felt so many other things too. When she was with Julian, she felt like a more exciting person. A grown-up. Corny as it might sound, she felt like this was what she’d been waiting for.

Chapter 16

In August, Ginny moved in with Flan, leaving behind the rented house where she’d spent most of her adult life. ‘It makes sense,’ said Conor’s father. ‘What’s the point in waiting for the baby or a marriage certificate when this is what we want?’ After some joking about the village not being able to cope with its sergeant living in sin, Conor agreed. He reckoned Tess’s mother would breathe new life into the bungalow in Kennedy Crescent.

A couple of weeks later, he decided to use his day off to see how the pair were getting on. This wasn’t the only reason for his trip. He wanted to talk to his father. Increasingly, Conor felt he’d made the wrong decision. He looked at people in Termonbeg and realised he knew nothing about their lives, about what motivated or scared them. Sometimes he was scared. He’d see the hostility in someone’s face and want to turn on his heel and run. On other occasions, he felt out of his depth. Useless. Earlier that week he’d had to talk to a woman about her son, an acne-strewn seventeen-year-old whose low-level bad behaviour was in danger of tipping into all-out thuggery. She’d stared at him with disappointed eyes. ‘Look, son,’ she’d said, ‘his father’s an alcoholic, his brother’s stoned out of his skull, and I’m worn out from cleaning up other people’s filth. What is it you want me to do?’ Then she began to cry, large tears slipping down her pinched face, her keening filling the room.

‘I’m sorry,’ Conor whispered. ‘I’m sorry.’ It was all he could say. When he left, she was still weeping. I’m not any good at this, he thought. I shouldn’t be doing it.

How arrogant had he been when he’d maintained that the regular beat wasn’t for him? In the four years since he’d joined the force, he’d learned that every young cop pictured themselves toppling drug lords and unmasking murderers. More often than not, they ended up directing traffic and looking for stolen pension books. That wasn’t all: as much as he hated to admit it, he should have paid more heed to his father’s advice. Who else had such a hard-won appreciation of how cruel the job could be?