It is a place of red hand flags and heroin and thick Protestantism, the politics not the religion really except that it is in so deep, and the new Sainsbury's and the new cinema really can't cover it up no matter how much the district council talks of new jobs or how many kids go to the integrated college, because, well, that's the top and the top doesn't tell you much. Never has.

So the Reverend Paisley will make phone calls and will pretend that he prays for the lost child. And Sinn Fein will insist that this proves that they are not the bad people here. And in houses across this "province," if it is that, or "occupied territory," if it is that, because, holy fuck, it is both and neither and we all know that, more will stoke their offspring with hatred than will stoke them with sense, all the while blaming "them" – Taigs, Proddies, Brits, Provos, Orangemen…

Michael McIlveen went to see a film on Sunday. He was fifteen and, well, I do not know. I did not know him. But I was fifteen once, and an angry fifteen at that, in an angry place, and fifteen-year-old boys run in packs, and they say things, and they challenge each other. It was what they do, what I did, what you did. It is one way we test the world. So, no matter that his family says he was just a "wee quiet one," and, yes, he may have been, as I said, I don't know. It does not matter. Was he quiet? Was he angry? Was he quiet at home but boisterous in his group? We know lads like that, do we not? It does not matter.

Michael McIlveen went to see a film on Sunday in Ballymena. An ancient town where the bells of ancient churches rhyme through stone streets and echo across the land. A Catholic kid among Catholic kids in a Protestant town. A kid in a place people have divided because they like power and privilege and because they do not care. And perhaps, just perhaps, at the cinema he said something, or someone said something. Things are always being said, but we all know they do not need to be.

Michael McIlveen went to see a film on Sunday in Ballymena and sometime after the film was over he was chased down a street and beaten with a bat and stomped by other boys, damaged boys, because he was Catholic, because the Reverend Paisley likes power, because Tony Blair will spend billions of pounds on Iraq but cannot be bothered with his "province," because the London literati announced last year that The Troubles were over, because the world has grown tired of this, because not enough people will stand up and say "stop."

Michael McIlveen went to see a film on Sunday in Ballymena and now his family will bury him in the cocoa-coloured soil of the north of Ireland, and the rains will fall, and the bells of ancient churches will rhyme through stone streets and echo across the land. Everyone on the island has expressed their regrets – as I am sure they should.

In London the Prime Minister could only say, "My legacy is a fourth term for Labour." The Queen said nothing at all.

Ira Socol © 2006