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I woke the morning after the funeral, amazed I hadn’t drunk. Hadn’t even had a cigarette. Was this grace? Sure didn’t feel very blessed. Dark snakes coiled and twisted in my mind. The ferocious guilt about my mother was a lash of epic proportions. Trying to block out the pictures of her in that cot, left to decay in the knacker’s yard.
Jesus, who wouldn’t drink? Alas, there wasn’t enough Jameson in the world to erase the stench of my abandonment. I had left her to waste away.
I trolled through the data of my present.
Tim Coffey, murdered on my account. A nutcase, obsessed with Synge, who’d killed two girls and was playing mind games. Not to mention the bloody vigilantes — Pikemen for Chrissakes.
I brewed some coffee, told myself I could really savour it without the shield of nicoti
