Orla laughed. She opened a tiny yoghurt pot and licked the foil lid then began to eat it with the handle of a dessertspoon. There was a little spot of yoghurt on the tip of her nose.

‘What did Daddy say about that?’

‘Oh, he doesn’t mind as long as I don’t write anything about him.’

‘And what do you write about?’

Izzy crossed her arms on her chest and gripped her shoulders. She closed her eyes. ‘We write about nights of wild passion and abandon, when in the first throes of romance we ripped off our clothes and—’

‘Mammy, stop!’

Izzy’s eyes flew open and she flashed a smile at her daughter.

‘Seriously, what do you write about?’ Orla asked.

‘We write about anything and everything. It can be ordinary enough. Thomas Patterson writes love poems to his wife – quite sexy stuff, actually. Fionnuala Dunleavy writes about doing the dishes, when she bothers to write anything. Eithne Lynch writes about auras. Just what you’d expect, I suppose. Colette sets us writing exercises and we have to respond to them.’

‘Colette Crowley?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Crazy Colette Crowley – poet laureate of Ardglas?’

‘Why do you say it like that?’

‘Ah, the state of her – going around in those big wool skirts and Aran sweaters, and the head on her – she looks like she cuts her own hair.’

‘Ah, will you stop – she’s a very attractive woman, Colette – that’s just what those bohemian types are like.’

‘And what kind of homework does she give you?’

Izzy hesitated. ‘Well, this week, she’s asked us to write a eulogy – it can be for ourselves or for a fictional character—’

Orla’s eyes widened as she withdrew the end of the spoon from her mouth.

‘Or if that’s too much of a challenge we have to imagine what would be written on our gravestone.’

‘Fuck off!’ Orla said. She gave each word its own emphasis.

‘Orla, I warned you, if you use language like that again, I’ll give you a slap in the mouth.’

‘She’s asked you to write a poem about your own death?’

‘Well, we can respond to it in whatever way we want but—’

‘Jesus, I thought it’d be all writing about flowers and sunsets and my heart is low because I have to make the dinner – that sort of thing!’ She placed the yoghurt pot on the counter. ‘Ugh!’ she said. ‘Housewives sitting around writing poems about their funerals . . . and then you all have to read them to each other?’

And later in bed when she’d relayed this conversation to James, in a tone of mock affront, he’d only laughed. When she’d put out the light, he’d turned to her and slid his hand over her stomach and said, ‘Shall we do what poets do?’ in a silly sing-song voice. She’d roared with laughter and rolled over on top of him.

Sitting in that airless hall now, with her blouse sticking to her, and Thomas Patterson reading a story about finding a tombstone with his name engraved on it, she could see why her daughter thought her to be ridiculous. It was an exercise in vanity, the whole thing – the clever, sophisticated lady had told her she was interesting and so she’d kept doing her homework, showing up, performing. Until the day Colette had stood in her sitting room, listening to her showing off about her ornaments and her golf trophies and Izzy had felt herself to be empty and exposed and not up to the task. Still, she could not relinquish this new version of herself Colette had presented her with, so she was back to make another attempt, to prove to a woman she barely knew that she had been right in bestowing her praise and favour upon her.

‘I’ll have to stop you there, Thomas.’ Colette held up her hand and smiled at him. ‘We have to keep it to no more than ten minutes for everyone or else we’ll run out of time.’

Thomas muttered something and folded over the pages he’d been reading from.

‘Now,’ Colette said, ‘does anyone have any initial thoughts on Thomas’s piece?’

Izzy had been so bored she’d stopped listening after a couple of minutes. ‘I mean, it was very descriptive,’ she said. ‘The bit about the crow leading him to the gravestone and landing on it was very—’

‘It’d scare the life out of you,’ Helen said, shooting Thomas a look of disgust.

‘Well, Helen,’ Colette said, ‘fiction is a safe way to explore the darker reaches of the mind. It reminded me a little bit of Edgar Allan Poe – the sense of foreboding, the imagery, the classic set-up of a man faced with his own mortality.’

‘The classic set-up that’s like a hundred other things I’ve read before,’ Fionnuala said.

‘Now, Fionnuala,’ Colette said, ‘could you frame that differently?’

Thomas was staring at Fionnuala.

‘Well, it’s always the same thing in these horror stories, isn’t it – man sees a ghost of himself, man thinks he’s alive but he’s dead, man glimpses his own death . . .’

‘Yes,’ Colette said, ‘we’ve discussed this before – the use of archetypes – the limited number of stories that are available to us and how it’s up to us to make something original out of the components we’ve been given—’

‘And if I’d been allowed to finish, you’d have seen that this story goes in a very different direction to what you’re expecting,’ Thomas said.

‘The date of his death is written on the gravestone, it’s a date in the future, and he ends up dying on that date,’ Fionnuala said.

‘Well, I didn’t see that coming,’ Helen said.

Thomas tossed his pages onto the table. ‘And where is the groundbreaking, original work of fiction you’ve written, Fionnuala?’ Thomas asked.

‘I haven’t had a minute’s peace all week. I have two teenagers at home and if one of them’s not slamming every door in the house then the other needs driving to football training. I have no time to be sitting around writing stories.’

‘I’ve said it every week,’ Colette said, ‘you don’t have to present work to attend – you’re always welcome here, but I would ask that you keep your comments as constructive and respectful as possible. Now, let’s move on.’

Eithne Lynch read her poem ‘Life After Death’ about the ‘multiple selves’ within her, and the number of times she’d been reincarnated and the number of times she’d be reincarnated again. She was a ‘vessel’ for these different lives and would finally ‘take refuge in her own womb’. Nobody really knew what to say about that. Fionnuala moved around in her seat a lot, pulling at the hem of her jumper. Then Helen read her poem ‘Deirdre of the Sorrows’, about the great turmoil that resulted from her death. The rain poured, the wind howled, animals cowered – generally nature was all askew. But despite the great impact her death had, no one showed up at her funeral. It was typical of the kind of thing she wrote, and after Colette had offered feedback and she had asked if the rest of the group had anything to add, Fionnuala, no longer able to stay silent, told Helen that she needed to go home to her husband and have a good ride. Even Helen laughed at that.

‘And would you like to share with us what you’ve written, Izzy?’ Colette asked.

Izzy looked down at the notebook. ‘I’m afraid I struggled a bit with this one,’ she said.

‘That’s all right.’

‘I mean, I’ve written very little, I really couldn’t think of anything.’

‘It’s OK, you don’t have to share but it really doesn’t matter how short it is, we’re not here to judge.’

That’s precisely what you’re here for, Izzy thought.