He lifts the envelope and weighs it in his hand - so much weight, he thinks, in so much lightness. Then he carefully opens it and lets his eye flick across the neat black rows of type. He won't bring himself to read it again - there's something profoundly draining about the emotional need that generates it, something that tries to cling to the reader and won't let go until it's fastened like some parasite to the lining of the brain. How can he be tied now to a boy whose photograph he's never seen? How can his desire to see his only child be meshed with some other long-dead boy from a Belfast back street?