Ginny greeted him with a hug that gave the lie to her delicate appearance. Kilmitten people weren’t given to showy sentiment. When they embraced you, they meant it, and he was touched.

‘Thanks for coming,’ she said. ‘I know you’re busy with the talks … and all of that.’

Flan shook his hand. ‘They haven’t killed the lad off this time, anyway.’

‘Have you been in touch with Tess?’ asked Lauren.

Tom nodded. They’d had a brief chat before she’d left Stansted. She’d managed to get the final flight of the evening. He enquired after Paula. She wouldn’t be arriving until tomorrow, Flan said. Paula and Marty O’Grady had split up several years previously and, with their children grown, she’d felt no desire to stay in Kilmitten. She now lived in Italy.

The conversation moved back to Conor. Ginny said that Sharon was at his side.

‘The doctors are with him too,’ she added, ‘so we should have more news in a little while. We’re about to go for a cup of tea. You will join us, won’t you?’

Their talk was stilted but, given the situation, he presumed this was normal. He hoped Tess arrived soon. No matter how long the gap between their meetings, they maintained an easy camaraderie. They might still have been eighteen years old, sharing a dank London flat. Or thirteen, sitting in a garden shed, drinking illicit bottles of Harp and discussing the latest bands.

‘I will indeed,’ he said. ‘I’d better give Vanessa a call first and let her know what’s happening.’

Tom had married Vanessa Broderick ten years earlier. Originally from County Limerick, she’d arrived in Kilmitten to spend a few days with an aunt. Tom had met her in Pilkington’s Lounge and, although she was eleven years his junior, they’d become a couple almost immediately. Vanessa was tall and fair-haired with a sturdy seam of ambition. She had a degree in business studies and had been managing her mother’s boutique in Limerick city. Against all of his plans and expectations, Tom had been working in Templemorris. What he’d expected to be a temporary job as a youth worker had become permanent.