He drives to the town, across the bridge, his black dog sprawled on the seat beside him. Empty trees stand bleakly, against the sharp blue of a sky that is clear of clouds. Smoke from the few houses he passes rises straight; frost lingers beneath the hedges.

As he approaches the town he raises a hand often in salutation; he is as well known as anyone for miles around. He draws the car up at Spillane’s public house. ‘A bottle of stout,’ he orders at the bar. He greets the men who are there, and nods when the barman says: ‘I hear she died.’

‘She did.’

A man looks up from the Irish Press. He’d heard that too, he says, and decently lets time elapse before he adds: ‘Lashaway to win, Tom?’

Wiping froth from his lips, Tom nods again. He intends to place a bet on Lashaway: he has a feeling in his bones about that horse. The man with the newspaper laughs. ‘I heard that one before, Tom.’

‘She’ll win all right.’

Ever since he read in the diaries about the events that followed his father’s death Tom has been trying to comprehend them. Dowley found the excuse for his vengeance in the troubles there were, and that was natural enough. But the extraordinariness of what happened next bewilders Tom. There’d always been talk of the Rollestons slaughtering their way to the island, but there’d been talk as well of how they’d been decent at the time of the Famine, and they’d been decent to his mother and they’d been decent to him. Funny the way a thing like the other would afflict them, the way they couldn’t come to terms with it.

‘You won’t get much in the way of odds,’ the man with the newspaper warns, and Tom replies that he knows he won’t. Other horses are discussed. Little Jack Horner and Funnyface III. Sky-Writer, Fred Wootton up. ‘Would the funeral be in the morning?’ the barman enquires, drying a glass.

‘Eleven o’clock.’

‘Ah, well.’

Tom finishes his drink, and does not speak again except to say he’ll be back later on. In Byrne’s he gets odds of eleven to eight. He takes the ticket and leaves the turf accountant’s, even though he could watch the race if he stayed there. He always prefers not to do that; it’s become a habit with him to place his bet and then to go away, to walk about and do what shopping is necessary while the race is run.

‘A good age,’ Esmeralda Coyne remarks, stopping him to say it. ‘Was it peaceful with her?’

‘I think maybe she went in her sleep.’ it’s nice like that.’