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it: ’cos I spoke me bleeding mind and told the bleeding truth. Me spirit lives on in Finbar Flannagan.”
    “May I speak to Finbar?”
    “No way, ’cos I left him on Innisfree, didn’t I?”
    “What’s he doing on Innisfree?”
    “You wha’?”
    “Why is Finbar on Innisfree?”
    “Screaming his brains out with the other woollybacks. He went there ’cos of me. I thought I could scream me pain away. But singing’s easier than screaming. And writing songs is easier than talking bollocks to some bleeding therapist like you .”
    Without warning, he stubbed out the cigarette, shot to his feet, and launched into song, playing air guitar as he circled the room.
     
    Father, you left me, but I didn ’ t leave you.
    I looked for you, but you’d gone away to sea.
    So I just gotta ask you: oh why, oh why?
    Just as abruptly, he stopped, and meekly returned to his chair.
    “You sing very well,” Henry said.
    “Of course I sing very well. I’m John Lennon, ain’t I?”
    “Where’s Finbar’s father?”
    “Don’t know. Me mam was killed in a car accident when I was eighteen. Left me with me aunt Mimi when I was six. Me dad didn’t want me neither. That’s why I wrote that song. Left me when I was five.” Finbar’s voice began to break.
    Henry pushed the box of Kleenex across the table. Finbar removed his spectacles and dried his eyes.
    “Tell me about Finbar’s parents.”
    The patient said nothing. Pushed the tissue into his trouser pocket and put the glasses back on, taking care to loop the legs round each ear one at a time—inadvertently showing Henry the needle marks on his inner forearms. He laced his fingers in front of him, an elbow on each knee, and stared at the ashtray, left leg going like a piston.
    “Finbar . .  . ?”
    “They didn’t fecking want me,” he said in a broad Ulster accent. The air in the room tightened. “He took off when I was seven and she . . . She took up . . . with . . . with him .”
    “Your stepfather?”
    “Yes.”
    “And he didn’t treat you well?”
    “No.”
    “What did he do to make you unhappy?”
    “He beat me ’cos I wasn’t his. And he . . . he . . .”
    The pause said it all. It was rare for a victim to give voice to the sexual abuse he’d suffered in childhood. The shame was too great. Better keep it in the dark and suffer. The wound that couldn’t heal because it would never be exposed to the light of day.
    “He had power over you once, Finbar, but not anymore.”
    “She didn’t fecking keep me, me mam.”
    With that comment he’d lost him, as Henry knew he would. Lennon was back. It was safer to be someone else than face the truth about his young self.
    For the rest of the session, Henry listened to John Lennon’s ramblings. But he’d met Finbar, for a few moments. That was a start.
    He could build on that.

Chapter five
    M onday morning, and Ruby was pinning sheets on the line. The weekend had been a disaster and she was still recovering from the fallout. May and June had come and gone but the memory of the upset they’d caused her still lingered. Getting their bedding laundered and done with was one way of dealing with the hurt. It was a household task she hated. Having to steep them in the bath, then scrub with a bar of Sunlight soap before putting them in the washing machine, meant an aching back and ragged cuticles for the rest of the day. But better now than have the chore hanging there in the future like a rain-fat cloud, ready to drench her every time she passed their bedroom door.
    On Friday, they’d arrived at their usual time: the twins. Performed their customary inspection of the twin beds, then retired to the mother’s bedroom and shut the door.
    It had become commonplace, since her husband’s death, for Mrs. Clare to retreat to bed an hour prior to their arrival and prepare her martyr act. Box of Kleenex at the ready, rosary and novena leaflets to hand.
    On this occasion, however, Ruby had made the mistake of