She’s died. That’s what I’m expecting. But instead Margot says, ‘Flora’s had a stroke.’

I stop in my tracks, gazing out across the river, even though it’s dark and I can’t see much, except the occasional light in a window at the apartments. The river looks black in this light, undulating, stagnant.

A stroke? ‘But isn’t she too young for a stroke?’ It’s a silly thing to say, I know that. But all the people I’ve ever known to have a stroke have been old, like my granddad and Rory’s great-uncle Cian.

‘It’s a result of the many years of drug abuse.’ Margot’s voice sounds so sad that my eyes fill with tears. ‘It’s severe, I’m afraid. She may never recover, fully.’

‘Oh, Margot …’ The unfairness strikes me. This cruel, shit world, I think, and I kick the wooden bench that overlooks the river hard, hurting my foot. Then I slump onto the bench, no longer afraid that I’m being watched. That particular fear is over now that I know it was Finn who’d been following me.

‘Before the stroke, she admitted it all,’ continues Margot, in that same resigned voice. ‘She hadn’t meant to shoot Heather. Heather had been trying to stop her. Clive and Deirdre had kept her prisoner for years, a prisoner to heroin, and she was pushed to the edge.’

‘Did Flora ever tell you what happened that day?’ I ask, as I light a cigarette.

I listen in silence, taking the occasional drag as Margot tells me the sequence of events of that fateful morning.

Heather had taken Flora back to Margot’s house at the caravan park with the idea that she would work on convincing her sister that they needed to go to the police. She left Flora sleeping in her room to make a cup of tea but when she returned Flora had gone. The drawer to the half-moon chest in the hallway was open and, straight away, Heather knew what her sister was about to do because it was where the key to the gun cabinet was kept. Heather raced into the barn just in time to see Flora taking the shotgun from the cabinet. ‘It’s the only way I can stop them doing this to someone else,’ Flora had said.