They went back to bed. Cushla stayed at the table and lit a cigarette. There had been a dreamlike quality to earlier. The baying mob, the smashing of glass, herself and Davy staggering from the burning house. It made no sense. How could Tommy possibly know Michael? She replayed every second she’d ever spent in the boy’s company, frantic that she had mentioned Michael, that she had left an address somewhere, that he could have seen her with him. She began to fret that Davy was the link, but he was just a child, and on all the journeys to school she had never even said his name. Could Betty have gleaned something? But that was ridiculous. Even if she had, she was distraught about Tommy leaving school and hanging about with the cousins. Bad news, she had said. As for Seamie: he could hardly walk or talk, let alone mastermind an assassination. Yet Tommy had been arrested. Maybe there was a connection. And even if there wasn’t, to the likes of Fidel and Leslie, the Laverys were harbouring the family of a boy who had killed one of them. A customer in the bar. A Protestant.

On her way to bed, she put a foot on the bottom step, then turned to look at the phone. On Easter Sunday, Tommy had rung to thank her for the chocolate. She had said, Michael? And the evening he called to the house he had mentioned it, saying, That time I phoned you said ‘Michael?’ She went upstairs, a feeling of dread growing in her stomach. Could that have been enough information for Tommy? But she hadn’t used his surname; ‘Michael’ could be anybody. To distract herself, she tried to make a plan for the morning. Perhaps she could drive to the estate to see if any clothing or furniture could be salvaged, but she remembered the fury of the neighbours. Maybe she would call the school and the parochial house and try to get some emergency money for them; surely now they were homeless they were deserving of help. She would phone Gerry; he might know what to do. When the light came up, she went downstairs and outside to the garden. Wood pigeons were waking in Mr Reid’s apple tree, making a plaintive warble. She smoked a cigarette and told herself it would be all right. Tommy hadn’t been charged, they would let him go. It was all just a mad coincidence. The McGeowns would be rehoused somewhere better.