‘Ha,’ she said. ‘Let me tell you, all he’s ready for today is a fistful of Solpadeine and a litre of 7 Up.’ She changed channels and caught the first few bars of ‘Fairytale Of New York’. Nope. No Christmas songs this morning. Her poor head couldn’t bear them. She remembered the year the song had been released. Still new to modelling, she’d been seeing an actor called Darren Hunter. Gorgeous as he was, poor Darren had been completely untalented. The last Tess had heard he was managing a DIY shop in Croydon. Another hop, and she arrived at one of those stations where every song is performed by a hyperventilating twenty-year-old. ‘Get over yourself,’ she said to the radio. And, yes, she did know she was talking to an inanimate object. She also knew that her twenty-year-old self would have been outraged at the suggestion she was too young for genuine pain.

Tess drove on in silence. She found the motorway strange. To her mind, roads like this belonged in England, Germany or America. She missed the villages with endearing names, community Lotto signs and slightly wonky Christmas decorations. On the plus side, the dreary towns and traffic bottlenecks were gone too. She’d be in Dublin before she knew it.

The funeral had been a reminder of all she loved and hated about home. She’d been hypnotised by the warmth, the stories and the men in stiff suit jackets who boasted about their age: ‘I’m eighty-five myself, but you know Paddy Chambers? He’s ninety-six. Ninety-six!’ Then the other Kilmitten had slammed into her. The O’Gradys had provided a reminder of how shabby and bleak the place could be.

She’d told Tom everything about her mother and Noel O’Grady. He would never have guessed, he said. She explained how Flan had duped Julian Heaney and how, until recently, Conor hadn’t known. Then she made him swear not to tell anyone, not even his wife. He said it wasn’t the type of thing he’d discuss with Vanessa. He thanked her for trusting him. She said she should have told him years ago, that he was one of her closest friends and deserved to know. ‘That’s why you got so worked up about Cyril Dinan,’ he said. ‘Now I understand.’ By then, they were crumpled from too much drink and too little food. They sat in the smoking area for another hour or more, the cold draping itself around them. From time to time, others came out, sent them a funny look, then walked away again.