By now, it was dark outside. Tess figured she’d probably had enough to drink. Everything was pleasantly blurry, the sound less distinct. She ought to find her mother and head home. She needed to call Daisy. And Miles. Then she did an about-turn: if ever there was an evening for more, this was it. She rarely had the opportunity to get drunk. Not like this, at any rate. Whatever their faults, at least Kilmitten people knew how to hold a funeral. Fond as she was of the English, they were terrible at funerals. Shocking. She could never understand why they waited a week, sometimes more. By then the momentum was gone. The ceremonies were limp affairs too: all meandering hymns and weak handshakes. No, when Tess’s time came, she wanted a send-off like Mercedes’. Long Mass, lumpy gravy and lethal white wine included.

She was returning from the bar, where a man she hardly knew – Charlie Murray? Murphy? Molloy? – had insisted on buying her a brandy, when she met them. Two of them. The worst two: Seánie and Noel junior. A brace of O’Gradys. Age had given their ugliness an extra dimension. Seánie’s suit trousers were at half-mast while Junior’s face had turned the colour of smashed plums. They were as brash, as effortlessly obnoxious, as ever.

‘There she is,’ said Seánie, ‘too stuck-up to say hello to her old school friends.’

Junior gave a joyless laugh. ‘You’d think now she’s knocking on a bit she’d lose the airs and graces.’

‘I’m choosy about the company I keep,’ said Tess.

‘Is that a fact?’ said Seánie. ‘It didn’t stop you from whoring around the globe for the best part of twenty years. There you were, in the papers with one fellow, then another. Your mam must have been mortified. Mind you, I’ve heard that, back in the day, old Ginny was good to go herself.’

Bile seeped into Tess’s mouth. She shared a father with these men. They were her family. Her brothers. No, Conor was her brother. The only brother who mattered. She’d imagined that success had inoculated her against the O’Gradys. She’d been wrong. Sweat collected on the back of her neck. Her stomach tightened. In half an hour, her head might be full of caustic put-downs but, in that instant, all she wanted to do was tell the truth. She wanted to say, ‘Your father raped my mother, and I’m ashamed to be related to you.’

A hand touched the small of her back. ‘Is something up?’

She looked around and saw Tom. ‘I …’

‘Lads,’ he said, ‘do yourselves a favour and fuck off home. This is a select gathering. Mercedes always said you were a bunch of thugs. I doubt she’d want you here.’