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anyone – even you – anything about him, it’s highly likely that he was already married. And it’s very unlikely that he’s still alive. He would probably have been a few years older than Marjorie. That would put him closer to ninety than eighty. I very much doubt that you’re going to be able to find him, and my advice is not even to try.’
    I want to argue, but everything he is saying makes sense. Trying to track down the father who never even knew I existed would be mission impossible. I feel my eyes becoming wet.
    ‘I know I’m being a bit childish, but I had it in my head that you could tell me everything I needed to know.’
    ‘If only I could. But there are other things I can tell you about your mother. I have things to give you, too.’
    He takes me to a sitting room and gestures towards several ancient-looking photograph albums piled on top of a coffee table.
    ‘I’ll leave you to look through them. I don’t think you’ll have any trouble working out who’s who,’ he says. ‘I’ll come back shortly.’
    All the photographs are black and white. Cracked and grainy, they recreate the past in a way that’s impossible to achieve with colour. Richard is right; I can easily work out who is who – the floppy-haired boy making faces at the camera or, oblivious to it, frolicking with a spaniel on the lawn; the little girl in her smocked dress, her attention focused on the doll she cradles in her arms.
    My mother’s mother and father – my grandparents – appear in some of the photos, and I study them, searching for hints of the attitudes that would lead them some day to reject their daughter and her child. But, in their formal clothes, their stiffly held poses, their expressionless faces, they give nothing away. They are of their time.
    I turn the pages and move through those lives, see my mother and uncle in school uniform, see them as young adults – he, languid and handsome as he smokes a cigarette; she, arrestingly beautiful, elegant in a blouse and skirt. Later, there are photos of Richard with a young woman and a small boy, who must be his wife and son. My mother appears in some of them, playing with the child or chatting with the woman.
    Richard comes back and sits down beside me on the sofa. He asks me whether I have any questions.
    ‘Not really. Not for now, anyway. There’s too much to think about. If it’s all right, I think I need to get going now.’
    He takes the photograph albums and holds them out to me.
    ‘Would you like to keep these?’
    I nod. At this moment, there’s nothing I want more. I will take the albums back to Drogheda and look at those photos of my beautiful mother again and again.
    ‘I hope you’ll come again. I would very much like to get to know my niece,’ Richard says as I leave.
    I could tell him that he’s left it a bit late, that he could have got to know me when having an uncle and a cousin would have been a good thing for a little girl living with her mother in a northside flat with no garden. But I promise to keep in touch, and I will, not only because he’s my mother’s brother, but also because he’s a kind man. I’ve begun to like him.
    He walks me to my car and, as I pull the seatbelt across me, he leans down to speak.
    ‘Louise, I know it must be hard for you, losing your mother and not having any contact with your father. But Marjorie must have had a good reason for not telling you anything very much about him. You should keep that in mind,’ he says.
    I give him a weak smile and say nothing. My visit has given me a lot to think about, but I’m making no promises.
    It’s only when I’m back on the motorway that I remember I haven’t asked Richard whether he knew anything about Ailish, the little girl whose letter to Santa Claus never made it to the snowy wastes of Lapland.

Chapter Eight
    I get up early after a restless night during which I woke several times thinking about what Richard had told me – that, even if my father had worked