Here is one of the images I carry in my memory from the past 30 years of violence. A pretty village railway station deep in the English countryside, the sun shining down on hanging baskets and tubs vivid with flowers. As I walk along the empty platform to catch a train to London, I am suddenly conscious of steps hurrying behind me. When I turn around, a middle-aged woman takes my hands and says "I just wanted to ask, Ms Holland, that if you hear anything about him, where his body might be, anything, please won't you get in touch with us."
It is the mother of Robert Nairac, to whom I have said Goodbye a few minutes previously, but who has followed me to make this terrible request.
I had been to see Dr and Mrs Nairac to talk about the possibility of making a television programme about their son. Robert Nairac, a captain in the British army, was killed by the IRA in 1997 and his body has never been found. I do not think his parents really wanted to talk about him to a journalist, but may have hoped that I would be able to tell them something about their son's death.
They greeted me with impeccable courtesy and, as the afternoon progressed, showed me mementoes of Capt Nairac - photographs of him at school at Ampleforth, as a boxing blue at Oxford. They were intensely proud of him and his mother told me he had wanted to make a real contribution to peace in Ireland.
Their composure never slipped. It was only after Mrs Nairac followed me along the railway platform that I glimpsed the depth of her grief for the child she had lost. I thought how far away the violence in Ireland must seem in that idyllic English village and how difficult to understand. I didn't get in touch with her again. The stories that one heard of her son's death and what happened to his body were so macabre that they could only have caused his mother further distress.
There have been reports that the young officer was involved in undercover work for the SAS, though these have always been denied by the British authorities.
These were some of the dirtiest days of the violence in the North and we often forget that the suffering extended far beyond this island. I have thought about Robert Nairac's family in recent days. His name has not figured on any IRA list of those missing persons whose bodies might be recovered. Perhaps that is a mercy.
At least they have been spared the ordeal of the past week. Other parents have had their hopes raised that they might at last be able to give a funeral to their children and, so far at least, have had those modest dreams dashed.
For the moment our attention is focused on the suffering of the families as their grim wait continues. Later, there will be fallout from this gruesome fiasco that will be as damaging to the republican movement as any of the "mistakes" of recent years. From the moment the IRA indicated it was willing to return some of the bodies of those who have disappeared over the years, some of its critics dismissed the pledge as a propaganda stunt, designed to help Sinn Fein. But many, in both political communities in Northern Ireland, welcomed last weekend's developments as a genuine move toward reconciliation.
At the very least the discovery of the bodies would bring solace after many years to those who had grieved. At another level, there was also the hope that this act of restorative justice might be a potent signal from the IRA that the time had come to admit the war is over.
Now, the gesture seems to have gone horribly wrong. Instead of dignified funerals, there are ghastly shots of families standing in the rain as the gardai continue to search for bodies. Why did nobody in the republican movement foresee that this might happen? The likelihood is that these makeshift graves were dug furtively and late at night to ensure those involved were not seen. The IRA has tried to explain the difficulties caused by the passage of time, change of personnel and other circumstances.
Very many people will find it difficult to forgive or forget the pain which has now been heaped on families who have already suffered for so many years. They are beginning to question whether the IRA was ever sincere about returning the bodies and, if so, why the organisation did not ensure its information was accurate and adequate before raising so many hopes.
Sinn Fein recognises the political damage which has been done. Gerry Adams has been on TV almost constantly trying to explain it away. The most immediate effect will be on the party's hopes for the European elections. Sinn Fein has been making a serious push in Northern Ireland to get Mitchel McLaughlin elected, urging SDLP voters to give him their transfers from John Hume. Failing this, the party calculated, a hefty increase in the Sinn Fein vote would be interpreted as support for its stance on decommissioning.
Now these hopes are sliding away in the drifting sand dunes of Carlingford Lough, where Jean McConville's children maintain their lonely vigil. It is hard to see moderate nationalist voters supporting Sinn Fein while such scenes continue to dominate the news.
Bertie Ahern understands the destructive implications for the broader peace process. The events of recent days have brought back memories of some of the cruellest episodes of the Troubles and reminded people that many of those who were around in those days are now high in the leadership of Sinn Fein. Its supporters will argue that the republican movement's decision to abandon violence and to sign up to the Belfast Agreement is part of the long process of putting those days behind us for ever.
But it's painfully clear in the editorial columns of newspapers on both sides of the Irish Sea and in the comments of members of the public that a link is being made between the debacle over the bodies of the disappeared and the decommissioning of arms. If the IRA cannot deliver on a voluntary pledge to return the bodies of its victims, the question goes, how can they be trusted ever to hand over arms.
That may not be entirely fair. There is every reason to suppose the IRA embarked on this project in good faith and wanted it to be a success. But the grief of the families has re-awakened public suspicions of the entire republican movement as callous and untrustworthy. That is a political reality with which Gerry Adams and others will have to deal when political talks resume on the formation of an executive.