I soaked you, she said.

He shook his head like a puppy, showering her with drops of rain. I’m all right, he said, through chattering teeth. She brought him to the staff toilet and went at his face and hair with a series of paper towels. He winced at their roughness.

The bell rang. That’ll have to do, she said.

Mr Bradley, the headmaster, was in the corridor when they came out. He loomed over Davy and said, Where’s your coat?

I forgot, sir.

Right, he said, as if he was trying to think of an appropriate punishment. Davy’s name sometimes came up at staff meetings. His father was a roofer who rarely seemed to have work, his mother a Protestant and, though the children were being brought up Catholic, she had not turned. For Bradley, they might as well have been members of the Manson Family.

It was just a mistake, said Cushla, placing her hands on Davy’s shoulders and steering him away.

Some of the other teachers expected the children to stand when they entered, but Cushla liked to slip in and hear the chatter. Davy went to his seat in the front row, under Cushla’s nose: not because he was naughty but because the others tormented him. Cushla emptied her basket, hanging her coat on the back of her chair. The children fell quiet and posed the way they had been practising for their First Holy Communion. Hands touching, fingers pointing towards heaven. She led them in a Hail Mary, their mouths so accustomed to reciting it the words were slurred, just sounds and intonations, like an anthem sung at a football match.

Before lessons they did The News. Cushla hated doing The News, but the headmaster insisted. He said it encouraged the children to be aware of the world around them. Cushla thought they already knew too much about the world around them. Davy stood up, always the first to volunteer. His red jumper was dark with damp at the shoulders and neckline.

There was a bomb in Belfast, he said.

He says that every day, said Jonathan, who sat beside him.

Well, today he’s right. Thank you, Davy, said Cushla.

Jonathan got to his feet. It wasn’t in Belfast, he said. A booby-trap bomb that was intended for a British Army foot patrol exploded prematurely, killing two boys near the border. They died instantly.

Booby trap. Incendiary device. Gelignite. Nitroglycerine. Petrol bomb. Rubber bullets. Saracen. Internment. The Special Powers Act. Vanguard. The vocabulary of a seven-year-old child now.

Well done, Jonathan, said Cushla.

Another boy stood up. There was a thing about streaking on Scene Around Six.

Cushla thought of the previous evening in the bar, Michael Agnew swirling his whiskey while Eamonn and the others teased her. And that smile. She felt her face redden.

Enough of that, now. Does anyone have any happy news?

Davy rose again. My da got a job, he said. He looked about him for approval, but the others weren’t listening. Running about with no clothes on, one of the boys was saying. In the nude.