Cushla went to the hall and lifted the phone, dialling Gerry’s number. I can’t stay here, she said.

Gerry lived on the outskirts of east Belfast, in a small semi-d in a cul-de-sac. He had bought it the previous August, he told her as he showed her in. Everything had been orange but he had managed to remove most of it. Except in here, he said, opening the door to the kitchen. The units were tangerine-coloured, the wall tiles brown with an orange geometric pattern. Brown lino on the floor had replaced an orange carpet.

In the living room a fawn Dralon couch, a cream shaggy rug. A white melamine coffee table topped with smoked glass. Shelves on either side of the fireplace, books to the left, music to the right, reel-to-reel tapes and long-playing records; a guitar and amp in the corner. Photographs in frames, one bigger than the rest, of a woman in a full skirt with a little boy by the hand: Gerry and his mother. He had her smile.

There was a Western on the television. A man appeared in the doorway of a saloon and stood with his feet apart, fingers splayed at his hips. The room fell quiet as he crossed the floor. A barmaid approached him, a redhead with harsh make-up and a frilly black dress. She leaned over the counter and offered him a drink. As she poured it, she looked in the mirror to see if he was watching.

Gerry brought a bottle of rum and some Coke that he served in bubbly amber glasses Maxol had given out free with petrol the previous year. The man in the film was being pursued by a ruthless gang. He drank heavily and roughed the woman up, leaving her weeping and begging for more. Cushla lit a cigarette and turned from the television.

The film ended and a news bulletin came on. An incendiary device had killed three soldiers. The police were following a definite line of enquiry in the murder of a prominent Belfast barrister.

They shot him in bed. In front of his wife, said Cushla.

I know, he said.

I shook her hand. Last Sunday. She was hardly there at all. And his son’s. He’s the image of him.

Easy, Gerry said softly.

They watched a game show. A man in a brown suit, smeared in blancmange, beaming. His son, an earnest boy in his teens, blushing for both of them.