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corners, doing
     their best to anaesthetise themselves. I think I gravitated towards those pubs because just by sitting in them I could construct
     a pretty accurate picture of my future. A facsimile of the past the old men were defeated in - an outlands waste where all
     hope falls on stony ground.
    A desolate void where no roses grow.
    For a while after that, I found myself drifting from job to job — nothing to do with journalism, just casual labour to keep
     me in booze. I stacked shelves for a while, did a couple of months on the buildings. But I always kept thinking of them walking
     through Dublin city, Imogen's face growing older every day. She would be seven next year, I would find myself thinking, as
     my stomach turned over violently. In the end I could bear it no longer. I woke up one day and knew I had no choice — I had
     to return. But, before I did that, I took myself on a trip to the seaside — down the coast to Bournemouth, to be precise.
    When the woman on the coach asked me sympathetically:
    —Why are you crying? Is there anything I can do to help?
    I just shook my head and recounted to her what it had been like that first day we'd gone there. We'd brought Imogen to Bournemouth
     on a picnic.
    —On the way home, I explained, she was so tired. But she said it was the best day of her life.
    I looked away. My eyes were red-rimmed.
    —I don't think I can go on without them, I said.
    I made sure to say it to the hotel barman too, pretending to be drunker than I actually was.
    —I'm glad you remember me, I said, for you won't be seeing me around again. It gets to the stage where life isn't worth it.
    I didn't labour the point. Just gave enough information in order for him to remember when the police came inquiring.
    At about four-thirty that morning I went down to the seafront. There wasn't a soul around - just this great big empty, impassive
     moon.
    I deposited my pile of folded clothes at the water's edge, then turned around and simply walked away. In my head I could see
     the barman explaining, touchingly empathetic.
    —His wife had just left him. Pity, that. They seemed such a happy couple the first time.
    I knew they'd probably locate her too, the woman from the coach. That was all that was really necessary, I felt.
    I didn't return to London. I caught a bus and headed for Wales. To Holyhead and the Rosslare ferry with nothing in my bag
     but a few bits of clothes, along with everything I'd collected about Ned Strange from the mountain.
    I rented a bedsit in Portobello, on the south side of Dublin city, beside the canal, pragmatically — thankfully — using a
     false name, just in case things began to turn awkward. In the nights I'd stagger home from the pub and telephone these random
     numbers, rambling incomprehensibly about The Snowman, hanging up after hearing the voice of some confused and near-distraught housewife. It was stupid. I'm aware of that. But when
     you're wounded by betrayal, every single sinew in your body is stretched tight.
    It's like at any moment you expect to detonate.
    That was how I was feeling when, quite out of the blue, one day I picked up a copy of the Sunday Independent and found myself staring at a shockingly familiar face. It was Ned Strange. His photograph covered half the front page. I
     would be perturbed, to say the least, by what I was about to read. He had hanged himself, apparently, in the shower of Arbour
     Hill prison, while incarcerated there for the sexual abuse and murder of a young boy. I remembered the name and the minute
     I read it I went cold all over, and remembered the heart-warming words:
    —I'm the bestest friend of Ned.
    It was the little boy with the freckles who'd helped him feed his chickens: Michael Gallagher!
    The subsequent account made me physically ill. To the extent that, when I had read the last sentence, I experienced this sense
     of some awful burden being lifted. As though the air all about me suddenly smelt sweeter. Just for