Creme Eggs. My ma got in too many and they’ll not shift now. Give them to those McGeown kids.

Cushla thanked him and offered to drive him down the road. He blew on his hands and got into the back seat.

To what do we owe the pleasure? said Gina.

Fidel brought chocolate for the McGeown kids, said Cushla.

Good, said her mother, as though he was only doing what he ought to be doing. The previous day they had gone into his shop to buy Easter eggs. Gina told him who they were for and – as if it was his responsibility, as a prominent local loyalist, to make amends in the form of confectionery – insisted he knock ten per cent off the price.

Are youse going to church? said Fidel.

Mass, said Gina. We’re going to Mass.

Well, say one for me, he said.

They left him at the bottom of the road. He slapped the roof of the car before Cushla drove off.

Acting the big fella, said Gina.

You can’t see the good in anybody. As for that mouth of yours. We’re going to Mass, she said, imitating her mother’s voice. You’ll get our Eamonn killed.

Rubbish.

The church was packed with families in new Easter clothes and women her mother’s age in thin coats and thick hats, the daily communicants. Gina did the bare minimum: Mass on Sunday but never on holy days of obligation. She blamed Vatican II for her lack of enthusiasm, said it wasn’t the same since they abolished the Latin Mass; to Cushla’s knowledge her mother did not have a single word of Latin.

They sidled into a space near the confession boxes. The heavy paintings that marked the Stations of the Cross seemed to be tilting from the walls, as if they might fall on top of them. Jesus is condemned to death. Jesus carries his cross. Jesus falls for the first time. Jesus falls for the second time. Jesus was a ringer for James Taylor, his facial expression unchanged from one station to the next, regardless of what degradation was being visited on him.

The McGeown children were two rows ahead. Tommy was dressed in a dark grey jacket with wide lapels, a white shirt. He looked like his father, eyes a murky blue, face squarish. He was going to be handsome. Davy and Mandy had the fair colouring and pale blue eyes of their mother. The day Cushla brought the dyed eggs to school he had refused to leave the classroom at break time, saying he needed to finish painting his. He had brought it to her desk – it was like a piece of spongeware, spotted with tiny brown rabbits on tufts of scutch grass – and cried when she admired it.