What he didn’t say was that his mind was moving on. Maybe his father was right. Maybe it was too late to get to the truth. That wouldn’t stop him trying.

Chapter 28

‘Is that the end of them?’ asked Tom.

Paige, who ran his constituency office, nodded. ‘You’d quite a collection today. What was it that last fellow wanted?’

‘Planning permission. His son’s keen to build a house near the woods at Toomey’s Hill. I did my best to tell him it wasn’t possible, that you can’t do that any more, only then he got thick with me. He claimed Paddy O’Grady would have fixed it. “Those days are gone,” I said to him. “It doesn’t matter if you own the land, you won’t be allowed build on it.”’

‘And?’ Paige was Liesl Talty’s daughter. While Liesl owed her name to her mother’s fondness for The Sound of Music, Paige had been named after a character in Knots Landing. The Taltys liked to stand out from the herd.

‘He had an almighty rant, told me that if it was my own family I’d sort it out quickly enough. There was no point in arguing, so I sat there and soaked it up.’

‘There’s no talking to some people,’ said Paige, as she picked up her bag and jacket.

‘How right you are,’ said Tom. ‘Aren’t voters great?’

Paige laughed her tinkling young laugh. ‘I’ll see you on Monday.’

‘You will indeed. Have a good weekend.’

Tom’s office was on Kilmitten’s main street, between what had once been Mangan’s shop (it was now a Spar) and the Cherry Tree café. There was a large photo of him in the front window, which he found embarrassing. ‘I’m like Kim Jong-un staring down on the peasantry,’ he’d complained to Vanessa.

‘Not at all,’ she’d argued. ‘People have to be reminded of what you’re doing for them.’

Tom knew that some Dublin-based politicians eschewed regular clinics. ‘If a constituent is entitled to a grant or a handout, they’ll get it without my help,’ he’d heard them say. That attitude wouldn’t be tolerated in Kilmitten, or anywhere else in the county. Tom also held clinics in Templemorris, Ennis, Shannon, Kilrush and Ennistymon. Saturday afternoons were reserved for Kilmitten, and more often than not, there was a queue out the door. Everybody was looking for something.