She began lessons with a spelling test and moved on to the next block of words, telling the children to think about how two letters could make a single sound. If you put ‘a’ with ‘i’, she said, it makes an ‘ay’ sound. She wrote words on the board. Rain. Pain. Stain. She said them aloud, but her mouth didn’t make an ‘ay’: a mean sound came out, more like ‘ie’. She thought of Michael in the car, when he had said ‘amazing’, and her stomach turned with longing. He had found her wrong.

When the bell rang for break, she was out the door before the children. In the staffroom, Gerry Devlin had made her a mug of tea. His shirt was printed with peacocks. There had been no mention of another date, and she had begun to look forward to seeing him by the kettle.

How’s your morning? he said.

Dire. I made two girls write an ungrammatical line from a Disney film twenty times. They were slagging the wee McGeown fella. He’s not even in.

Someone was talking about that child earlier. His father is in hospital.

Is he sick?

He got a hiding or something.

He was attacked?

Gerry shrugged. That’s what it sounded like.

Back in the classroom, she handed out the songbooks and turned on the radio. The song began, ‘The Streets of Laredo’. There was heat and dust in it, a dying cowboy begging water to wet his parched lips. Davy would have been reeling about the room, taking the bullet slowly then slumping over his desk. What had happened to his father?

After lunch, the children who had gone home to eat brought news.

Davy’s da is in hospital.

He got beat up.

They near killed him.

The body of a man was found on waste ground in East Belfast in the early hours of the morning. He has not yet been identified. Davy’s father had initially been reported as a fatality. They must have left him for dead.

There was a knock at the door. Two girls from P7 had brought a note from Bradley with the pompous instruction Bring your charges to the hall immediately.

The classrooms were emptying lines of children on to the corridor. They moved in silence along the terrazzo floor. Word of the attack had gone around the school.

Bradley was on the stage with Father Slattery. He took a step forward and tugged the lapels of his brown suit once, as if he was about to launch into a stand-up comedy routine. You will have heard that the father of one of our pupils is in hospital, he said. It is not a time for idle gossip. The best thing we can do is say a prayer.

Slattery moved in front of the headmaster and the children put their hands together, in readiness for Our Fathers, Hail Marys, Glory Bes. Hands up who has heard of Romper Room? he said.

A girl from P4 raised hers. It’s a TV programme, she said. Miss Helen gets kids to sing wee songs.