Now that he’d reached his destination he felt more sober than he cared to be. A little bit sick, as was often the case after a rake of drink, even with all that he drank. But usually at these times he was turning and turning in his bed until the drink settled in him, not standing at a woman’s door in the middle of the night. And he didn’t really know why he’d come. He tried to think of a reason, an excuse for why he might have walked the three miles from the town to the cottage in the early hours of the morning, but nothing came to him. He rapped his knuckles on the door three times.

Nothing. He coughed, rapped on the door three times again. There was a noise from inside.

‘Who is it?’ The voice was pitched somewhere between fear and annoyance.

He tried to speak but the words came out garbled. He tried again. ‘It’s me, Colette,’ he said.

‘Who?’

‘It’s me, Michael Breslin,’ he said, and that answer seemed ridiculous even to him. ‘Can I talk to you?’

‘Michael, what the hell are you doing up here at this hour of the night?’

He heard the latch click. She opened the door a couple of inches but kept the chain in place. Even in the dark the pale blue of her eyes shone.

‘Can I come in?’ he said.

‘What for, Michael? What the hell do you want?’

And when he failed to come up with an explanation or a timely answer to that, she said, ‘Fuck off home to your mother, Michael – before I call the Guards.’

The door slammed in his face. Michael turned on his heel. The town felt a much greater distance from him now. He took a couple of exploratory steps and then began the long walk home.

*  *  *

Izzy had agreed to have lunch with Teresa Heffernan in the clubhouse after their game and she was beginning to regret the decision. They’d both played badly, mostly, Izzy believed, because of Teresa’s gossiping. The wind was high, and, determined to be heard, she had shouted continuously as they rounded the course. Bert Harvey had built an extension on his house without planning permission and now the County Council was getting ready to tear it down. Fionnuala Dunleavy’s son had written off the car – driven it straight into a wall. ‘Off his head on drugs,’ Teresa had said. ‘A miracle – not a scratch on him.’ Izzy had begun to think it tactical, this method of distraction. She’d lost four shots on the back nine and Teresa had won, and Izzy was thick with herself. But now, sitting in the crowded clubhouse, staring across a table cluttered with scrunched-up paper serviettes and teapots and little metal baskets filled with half-eaten sandwiches, she was more annoyed that she was still listening to Teresa, whose seemingly inexhaustible stream of chatter had arrived at the subject of Colette Crowley.

‘And you believe that?’ Izzy asked.

‘Well, Andrew’s friends with that apprentice he has working in the butcher shop and he told him that he went up there last Friday night and she let him in. And several people saw him heading in that direction after the Reel Inn closed,’ Teresa said. ‘And she certainly has form.’

‘Are you honestly telling me,’ Izzy said, ‘that you believe Michael Breslin went walking up to that cottage in the middle of the night, and Colette let that obese eejit climb up on top of her?’

‘Don’t shoot me,’ Teresa said, her smile collapsing. ‘I’m just telling you what I heard.’

‘Well, it would suit you better than to go around spreading rubbish like that.’

‘Hang on now,’ Teresa said, ‘sure it’s only a bit of craic.’

‘A bit of craic? That poor woman must have been scared out of her wits. Imagine if some fella came banging on your door in the middle of the night?’

‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Teresa said into her cup.

‘Jesus, is there only one person working in this place today? Here,’ Izzy said, ‘try and grab that one’s attention.’ She held out a stack of empty sandwich baskets to the waitress striding past, her ponytail of black curls flapping behind her. ‘Walking away empty-handed every time,’ Izzy said, dropping the baskets back onto the table.

‘Well, of course,’ Teresa said, ‘you know Colette better than I do.’

‘And I know she wouldn’t have anything to do with a gobshite like Michael Breslin. That fellow’s a scourge when he has a drink taken.’

‘Well, right so,’ Teresa said, ‘forget I mentioned it.’

And talk turned to Christmas, and visitors, and Teresa’s brother coming from Australia for the first time in fifteen years, and things to be bought, and cooked, and cleaned, but Izzy found herself unable to think of anything but Colette.

*  *  *

The dry air in the hall scraped Izzy’s throat. It was too warm for the jumper she’d worn and so she’d discarded it on the chair beside her and now she sat there in a cream satin blouse feeling fussy and overdressed, the material staining at the armpits. She looked across at Colette in her long tartan skirt, with one enormous safety pin that seemed to hold the whole thing together. It looked like an old blanket she’d pulled off the back of a settee. Her legs were crossed and she tapped at the air with her black high-heeled boot, and Izzy could see where the leather came apart from the sole and gaped open like a little mouth.

It was the fifth workshop. Numbers had peaked at eight and reduced again to five. There was still Eithne, and Fionnuala, and Thomas. Helen Flynn, a retired schoolteacher, had joined them in week three but she rarely said a word or made eye contact with anyone. And when she did lower her notebook from her face and peer out at them from her round, rimless spectacles, all she had to contribute was some plaintive offering about how difficult she’d found the homework.

Class, as usual, began with housekeeping.

‘Colette,’ Eithne said, ‘I know I asked last week that the radiators be turned up, but I really feel they’ve reached an unhealthy temperature.’ She was perched on her chair with one bare foot placed on her knee in a kind of half-lotus position, gently rocking back and forth and fanning herself with her notebook. ‘It’s a cold night out there and it’s not good for the human body to go from one extreme to the other.’

‘Your body’s going through extremes because you’re bloody menopausal,’ Fionnuala said.

‘And that’s as it may be, Fionnuala, but this heat is not helping.’

‘Have you been to see your GP?’ Thomas asked.

‘Oh Jesus, I remember when I was going through it,’ Helen said. ‘It was a curse.’

Eithne ignored them and continued to fan herself.

Colette closed her notebook and gave a wan smile. Her eyes appeared to smart, like she’d just woken up and hadn’t yet adjusted to the light. ‘Now, I do apologise for the heat this evening. I went around and I tried to turn the radiators down but they seem to be stuck, so I’ll have to have another word with the caretaker and see what he can do for us for next week.’

‘Perhaps, Colette,’ Thomas said, ‘if I had a look at them there might be—’

‘I think if we get on with our work, Thomas, that should be enough of a distraction. Now, how did we do with the exercise?’

Izzy had struggled with her homework. Since starting the workshop she’d written a few poems and short pieces. She thought them to be among the stronger work in the class, and Colette’s comments reflected that. But this particular challenge required something more from her, and several times she’d sat down at her kitchen table to attempt the task and then abandoned it.

Orla’s comments hadn’t helped. Orla came home from boarding school in Sligo every Friday evening, unless she went off to one of her friends’ houses. It was rare for a weekend to pass without some argument, and often that had to do with Izzy sharing her opinion on Orla’s appearance. She did not want to hurt her daughter’s feelings but she felt that if she said nothing Orla might not realise how fat she was getting. And so her concerns expressed themselves in sideways swipes that she chastised herself for as soon as she’d said them. ‘That pocket money we give you is for stationery, not junk food,’ was how she’d responded when Orla complained that her jeans no longer fitted. Orla had returned to school that Sunday with the avowed promise that she’d never speak to her mother again.

Getting her to think seriously about her future was another challenge, and Izzy loved to threaten her within earshot of James – ‘Do you want to be stuck in this town for the rest of your life married to some eejit?’ She was bright and could do what she wanted, within reason. She probably wouldn’t get the points for medicine or veterinary or any of the really big courses but she could be a solicitor or an accountant or one of those nice, clean jobs.

But where Orla lacked opinions about her career, she was full of chat about everything else. Izzy had hidden her workshop notebook in a drawer in the kitchen but Orla had gone rooting for something and found it.

‘What’s that?’ Orla asked.

‘That’s my homework,’ Izzy had said with a note of forced preciousness in her voice.

‘Your homework? Are you doing another one of those classes? How many is that now? Oil painting, watercolours, yoga, tai chi, knitting—’

‘Ah, will ya mind your own business. It’s my writing workshop, if you must know.’

‘A writing workshop?’

‘Yeah – have you never heard of one of those? You’d want to get a life, Orla.’