However, she says honouring her uncle’s memory has not always been easy. She recalls the shock and disgust she felt when, aged 17 and on a bus to a local nightclub with a mixed group of Protestant and Catholic teenagers, some began singing a pro-IRA song: “You look back on it now and it’s like, why didn’t I just get off the bus? But you just have to kind of put your head down and forget about it. Then you feel a bit sick about it afterwards when you think, maybe I should have said something.
She says that while attending the local Protestant secondary school, many of her classmates couldn’t understand the strength of her feelings about the Troubles: “I was always singled out, like, ‘Oh, Zara’s very staunch, she’s very conservative, she can’t let things go’, but it isn’t that I can’t let things go. It’s that I’m acknowledging my history and my identity. I’m not ashamed of it.
He says he never discussed his grandfather’s death with his grandmother, who still lives in the New Lodge: “My granny has never spoken to me about it and I just don’t ask her. It probably still hurts her. I would never talk to my granny [about it] because I wouldn’t want to upset her.”