I started to get up again, but one of those deformed hands shot out and grabbed my wrist, faster and a lot stronger than I had expected. The touch of his skin made my hair stand up. “Sit down and listen, you. What I’m telling you is this: I’ve put up with a load of shite in my life and never thought about topping myself. I’m not weak. But the first time someone puts a nappy on me, I’m gone, because that’s when there’s no fight left where winning would be worth my while. You have to know what to fight against and what to leave alone. D’you get me?”

I said, “Here’s what I want to know. Why do you all of a sudden give a tinker’s damn about my attitude to anything?”

I expected Da to come back swinging, but he didn’t. He let go of my wrist and massaged his knuckles, examining his hand like it belonged to someone else. He said, “Take it or leave it. I can’t make you do anything. But if there’s one thing I wish I’d been taught a long time back, it’s that. I’d have done less damage. To myself and everyone round me.”

This time I was the one who laughed out loud. “Well, color me gobsmacked. Did I just hear you take responsibility for something? You must be dying after all.”

“Don’t fucking mock. Yous lot are grown; if you’re after banjaxing your lives, that’s your own fault, not mine.”

“Then what the hell are you on about?”

“I’m only saying. There’s things went wrong fifty years ago, and they just kept going. It’s time they stopped. If I’d’ve had the sense to let them go a long time back, there’s a lot would’ve been different. Better.”

I said, “Are you talking about what happened with Tessie O’Byrne?”

“She’s none of your bloody business, and you watch who you’re calling Tessie. I’m saying there’s no reason your ma should have her heart broke for nothing, all over again. Do you understand me?”

His eyes were a hot urgent blue, crammed too deep with secrets for me to untangle. It was the brand-new soft places in there-I had never before in my life seen my da worried about who might get hurt-that told me there was something enormous and dangerous moving through the air of that room. I said, after a long time, “I’m not sure.”

“Then you wait till you are sure, before you do anything thick. I know my sons; always did. I know well you had your reasons for coming here. You keep them away from this house till you’re bloody sure you know what you’re at.”

Outside, Ma snapped about something and there was a placating murmur from Jackie. I said, “I’d give a lot to know just what’s going on in your mind.”

“I’m a dying man. I’m trying to put a few things right, before I go. I’m telling you to leave it. We don’t need you causing trouble around here. Go back to whatever you were doing before, and leave us alone.”

I said, before I could help it, “Da.”

All of a sudden Da looked wrecked. His face was the color of wet cardboard. He said, “I’m sick of the sight of you. Get out there and tell your ma I’m gasping for a cup of tea-and she’s to make it a decent strength, this time, not that piss she gave me this morning.”

I wasn’t about to argue. All I wanted was to grab hold of Holly and get the pair of us the hell out of Dodge-Ma would blow a blood vessel about us skipping dinner, but I had rattled Shay’s cage enough for one week, and I had seriously misjudged my family-tolerance threshold. I was already trying to decide on the best place to stop, on the way back to Liv’s, so I could get Holly fed and stare at that beautiful little face till my heart rate dropped back into normal range. I said, at the door, “I’ll see you next week.”

“I’m telling you. Go home. Don’t come back.”

He didn’t turn his head to watch me go. I left him there, lying back on his pillows and staring at the dark windowpane and pulling fitfully at loose threads with those misshapen fingers.

Ma was in the kitchen, stabbing viciously at an enormous joint of half-cooked meat and giving Darren hassle, via Carmel, about his clothes (“… never get a job as long as he’s running around dressed like a fecking pervert, don’t say I didn’t warn you, you take him outside and give him a good smack on his arse and a nice pair of chinos…”). Jackie and Gavin and the rest of Carmel’s lot were in a trance in front of the telly, staring slack-jawed at a shirtless guy eating something wiggly with a lot of antennae. Holly was nowhere. Neither was Shay.

21

I said, and I didn’t care whether my voice sounded normal or not, “Where’s Holly?”

None of the telly crowd even looked around. Ma yelled, from the kitchen, “She’s after dragging her uncle Shay upstairs to help her with her maths-if you’re going up there, Francis, you tell them two the dinner’ll be ready in half an hour and it won’t wait for them… Carmel O’Reilly, you come back here and listen to me! He won’t be allowed to sit his exams if he goes in on the day looking like Dracula-”

I took the stairs like I was weightless. They lasted a million years. High above me I could hear Holly’s voice chattering away about something, sweet and happy and oblivious. I didn’t breathe till I was on the top landing, outside Shay’s flat. I was pulling back to shoulder-barge my way in when Holly said, “Was Rosie pretty?”

I stopped so hard that I nearly did a cartoon face-plant into the door. Shay said, “She was, yeah.”

“Prettier than my mum?”

“I don’t know your mammy, remember? Going by you, though, I’d say Rosie was almost as pretty. Not quite, but almost.”

I could practically see Holly’s tip of a smile at that. The two of them sounded contented together, at ease; the way an uncle and his best niece should sound. Shay, the brass-necked fucker, actually sounded peaceful.

Holly said, “My dad was going to marry her.”

“Maybe.”

“He was.”

“He never did, but. Come here till we give this another go: if Tara has a hundred and eighty-five goldfish, and she can put seven in a bowl, how many bowls does she need?”

“He never did because Rosie died. She wrote her mum and dad a note saying she was going to England with my dad, and then somebody killed her.”

“Long time ago. Don’t be changing the subject, now. These fish won’t put themselves in bowls.”

A giggle, and then a long pause as Holly concentrated on her division, with the odd encouraging murmur from Shay. I leaned against the wall by the door, got my breath back and wrenched my head under control.

Every muscle in my body wanted to burst in there and grab my kid, but the fact was that Shay wasn’t completely insane-yet, anyway-and Holly was in no danger. More than that: she was trying to get him to talk about Rosie. I’ve learned the hard way that Holly can outstubborn just about anyone on this planet. Anything she got out of Shay went straight into my arsenal.

Holly said, triumphantly, “Twenty-seven! And the last one only gets three fish.”

“It does indeed. Well done you.”

“Did someone kill Rosie to stop her from marrying my dad?”

A second of silence. “Is that what he says?”

The stinking little shitebucket. I had a hand clenched around the banister hard enough to hurt. Holly said, with a shrug in her voice, “I didn’t ask him.”

“No one knows why Rosie Daly got killed. And it’s too late to find out now. What’s done is done.”

Holly said, with the instant, heartbreaking, absolute confidence that nine-year-olds still have, “My dad’s going to find out.”

Shay said, “Is he, yeah?”

“Yeah. He said so.”

“Well,” Shay said, and to his credit he managed to keep almost all of the vitriol out of his voice. “Your da’s a Guard, sure. It’s his job to think like that. Come here and look at this, now: if Desmond has three hundred and forty-two sweets, and he’s sharing them between himself and eight friends, how many will they get each?”

“When the book says ‘sweets’ we’re supposed to write down ‘pieces of fruit.’ Because sweets are bad for you. I think that’s stupid. They’re only imaginary sweets anyway.”