olin Maguire’s sister, Deirdre, put a pot of tea down in front of him, with a blueberry muffin, his favourite. Anything to cheer him up, despite the fact the weight he was piling on was obvious. She just wanted to make him happy. Her poor baby brother had been through enough already and now that his wife, Simone, and the kids had moved out ‘for a break’, he needed her more than ever. Since the day it all happened he hadn’t shown any sign of anger. She was waiting for it to happen, she was waiting for the day that he would explode. She didn’t want to be here when it happened but she knew she would have to be. He didn’t have anybody else. Plenty who supported him were there to give him the thumbs up on the street, or a slap on the back in the pub, but they weren’t there for him, not really.

‘Thanks, Dee,’ he said gently, keeping an eye on the television.

‘No problem. Are you sure you don’t want to come out with us for lunch? It’s a nice carvery. Neil says they put the football on a big screen. The kids will be there and they’d love to see you.’

‘Nah. Thanks, though.’ He gave her a small smile. ‘I’ll just watch it here.’

Deirdre stood up and stretched, she looked out the window. ‘She’s there again.’

Colin didn’t need to ask who. He looked out the window briefly, seeing across the road to the green and beyond.

‘Did you know that already?’ she asked.

‘Yeah.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I’m not in the mood to run chasing after you across the green with a frying pan in your hand.’

‘Frying pan? I’d do a lot better than that, believe me,’ she fumed, hands on hips, looking out. ‘How many times is this? The second? Third?’

‘Fourth, I think.’

‘What the hell is she doing?’ She moved closer to the window to watch her.

‘Don’t, Dee, she’ll see you.’

‘I want her to bloody well see me. I don’t know what she’s planning but I swear to God I want to go out and deck her.’

‘Dee, stop.’ He said it so gently it made her drop her angry stance immediately. He was like their daddy: just didn’t seem to be able to have any anger in him at all. Too soft, too gentle, too ready to be there to listen to other people’s problems. That’s what had got him in this mess in the first place. He should have let that stupid schoolgirl go off home with whatever problems she had that day instead of trying to console her. She’d taken him up wrong, read into his kindness too much and he’d paid for her embarrassment.

She sighed, ‘I don’t know how you do it, Colin. If I was you I’d want to go out there and do God knows what to her. Okay, I’ll be late if I don’t go now. If you change your mind about lunch let me know. We’ll be there from two on, okay?’ She kissed her brother on the head and left.

Colin made sure his sister drove the other way, not trusting her not to mow down the reporter. When she was gone and the house returned to the quiet he still couldn’t get used to since Simone said she needed time to herself to think about their future, he took the paper from behind the cushion in the couch and he laid it out on the coffee table before him. He looked at the photo of Katherine Logan on the front of the paper, the happy smiling face, and then inside, the woman who left the courthouse and he read the article again.

When he looked out the window again, she was gone.