‘And then I thought: why not me? Why not? We were loving each other’s company, couldn’t get enough. There was chemistry there – even I could tell that. The way she looked at me, the way her breathing went when we accidentally got close— There was something.’

A sharp glance at me and Steve. That faint stinging red has come up on his cheekbones again. ‘Probably it sounds pathetic to you: just a middle-aged fool head over heels for some young one, oldest story in the world. You weren’t there.’

Every murderer says that to us, sooner or later. You weren’t there. You don’t understand. There’s a small dry chip of silence while no one points that out.

I say, ‘It was that easy? You said, “Hey, let’s give it a go,” and Aislinn said, “Sure, why not?” ’

McCann shakes his head heavily. ‘I don’t know how I made it happen. You two, you keep talking like she hunted me down, but it wasn’t— She didn’t want to be some homewrecker. It took me a while to convince her she was doing no harm that hadn’t been done years ago. When I finally, when we finally . . . that was when I realised: she honest to God cared about me. She . . . It . . .’ A quick involuntary catch of breath. ‘That blew me away. Just blew me away.’

The wonder in his voice. He sounds like a teenager, lifting with joy and amazement, he sounds so tender you could bruise him with one wrong touch. Time after time it’s left me gobsmacked, how people will tell you things they should keep locked inside for life; how ferociously they need the story to be out in the air, in the world, to exist somewhere outside their own heads.

He says, ‘It was real. All that shite you’ve got, that means nothing. One time I fell getting over her wall, scraped up my knee. Aislinn knelt down in front of me and washed it, so gentle. You think she’d’ve done that if she only hated my guts? Maybe she did, some of the time, but she loved me as well. People are complicated. She was more complicated than I realised.’

He’s giving me and Steve a stare that’s a challenge. No takers. The whole thing is pure double-dipped fantasy, but the last thing we want to do is take it apart. Me and Steve, scrabbling so hard to pull the true story out of the tangle, we forgot the false ones come with their own ferocious, double-edged power.

The gaffer nods. ‘I would’ve put money on that. Nice to know I’m not losing the bit I have.’ He resettles himself in his chair, adjusts his waistband over his belly. ‘Now we’ve got that cleared up,’ he says. ‘Let’s talk about Saturday night.’