Little children crowded onto a threadbare sofa, comforting each other and begging for information about their missing mother. Orphans who didn't know it.
A TV interview with Jean McConville's 10 kids after she was abducted in December 1972 will touch even the hardest hearts when replayed tomorrow night in the powerful documentary 'The Disappeared'.
It's a beautifully shot and deeply moving film. A masterpiece of heartbreak from reporter Darragh MacIntyre. It also exposes a history of political lying.
Jean McConville was dead but after her children spoke to journalists, it was time for the Provos to kill the truth, con the public, and disappear the story.
Jean hadn't been abducted at all, they told the newspapers. Terrified of the media interest, she just refused to "come out of hiding".
Decades later, senior Sinn Féin figures still shun the truth. Gerry was never in the IRA. Gerry didn't order Jean McConville's murder. Gerry knew nothing of the Disappeared.
Claims to the contrary are a plot to harm the Sinn Féin president. Unionists, journalists, securocrats, dissidents all combined in a conspiracy against Gerry, the most victimised leader in the world.
Dolours Price and Brendan Hughes lied when they made their unfounded accusations, we're told. And former Provisional IRA founder Billy McKee and South Armagh republican Martin McAllister, who taught Bobby Sands to play the guitar in jail, will be dismissed as lying tomorrow too.
Indeed had Bobby Sands not died on hunger-strike and were here now recollecting Gerry's role in the IRA, he'd be added to the long list of liars.
The Sinn Féin president attempts to duck and dive when quizzed during the programme about some of the 1972 Disappeared.
Waffle about being too busy with the peace process to recollect detail concerning his paedophile brother Liam has been replaced by different waffle about "turbulent times".
But Adams-speak reaches new heights of absurdity when the Sinn Féin leader chides his interviewer: "Do you not live in the real world? People go off, people disappear......"
Not in our world, Gerry. You inhabit an entirely different orbit. And it's time to go, time to politically disappear.
