She poured another glass of wine and wandered into the bedroom and stood before the full-length mirror. However thin her life had felt wandering around that flat in Dublin and during those cruel months she’d spent living with her mother, now it felt like it had no substance to it at all. She raised the wineglass and clinked it against the mirror. ‘Cheers,’ she said.

There was the noise of an engine and she walked to the window and looked down just as Donal’s van pulled up and the sensor light went on above his front door. He stepped out of the van and she counted aloud – one, two, three. He looked up at her and at once lowered his eyes, just like the other day when he’d dropped off a letter, making a point of telling her that Dolores and the kids were going away for the weekend. They were down in Roscommon seeing her sister, he’d said, all the while staring down at the doormat and trying to straighten it with his foot.

Colette ran out the front door and over to the wall. The wind whipped her hair across her face, the rain spat at her.

‘Donal!’ she shouted down to him just as he was stepping through the front door. Her words were carried away on the wind, reduced to nothing. She shouted again and he turned and looked up at her, crowned in a halo of light from the porch. ‘Would you mind coming up to me for a second?’ she asked.

‘What?’ he shouted back at her.

‘There’s a problem,’ she shouted.

He shuffled in the doorway a bit, wiped his feet on the mat. ‘Aye – just give me one minute and I’ll be up to you then,’ he shouted.

She ran back inside and shut the door behind her. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ she said. She sat down at the table and downed the glass of wine. She got up, took off her shoes. She crossed the cold stone floor and went into the bedroom and turned the lamp on beside the bed, turned off the main light. Standing before the mirror she smoothed her hand over the ends of her hair a few times so it fell evenly around her shoulders.

There was a knock on the door and she felt the noise of it sift down through her. She answered it and looked at him but she did not move and for a moment he just stared at her.

‘Is something wrong?’ he asked.

‘No,’ she said and moved aside to let him pass. ‘Everything’s fine, Donal, but the heaters, I’m having terrible problems with the heaters.’

‘Are they still not coming up to temperature?’ he asked, walking to the window.

‘That’s right,’ she said, and sat back down at the table.

He was wearing a big black padded jacket not dissimilar to the one Carl wore. It rose up on his back as he crouched down to check the pipe so she saw a crescent of white flesh exposed. Dark hairs sprouted at the base of his spine.

‘Well, there’s good heat coming out of that one now?’ he said. He looked up at her with curiosity and she nodded. He rose and moved closer to her at the table. ‘You should put a few decorations up in here, make the place look a bit more festive.’

She looked up at his face to see if this was meant as some kind of joke, but it was impossible to read anything from the expression he wore.

‘What do you be listening to?’ he asked.

‘What?’

‘When you’re dancing. What do you be listening to?’

‘You’ve seen me dancing?’ She gave a little laugh.

‘You know I have.’

‘Do you really care what music I play?’

She watched him narrow his eyes at her then – it was a change so slight and sudden but there was frustration in it, and it gave her pleasure to unsettle him just a little.

‘I don’t think that’s what you came up here for, Donal – to talk about my record collection.’

‘I came up here because you asked me.’

‘I did, yes.’

She looked down at the table. ‘Will you have a drink?’ she said and rose suddenly just as he took a half step towards her. His face was inches from hers but she would not look at him. She stared down at her bare feet, toe-to-toe with his black work boots, blotted with mud. And she could smell the night upon him, the cold air that clung to him. There was a smell of cigarettes on his breath, which was strange because she had never seen him smoke, and just beneath that was the low hum of alcohol. She looked him dead in the eye and before she turned away an agreement was made. She walked into the bedroom and stopped beside the bed. His footsteps behind her were so soft and she began to count their slow progress across the floor – one, two, three – until he was close enough to her again to feel the chill that rose off his body. His fingertips grazed her skin as he pushed aside her hair. The cold air kissed the back of her neck.

Chapter 12

Izzy heard the front door open and turned down the heat under the pots and pans that crowded the cooker. The little television on the worktop was showing the news, and it was all about the newly formed government. Ministers who’d lost their jobs kept their head down as they exited government buildings, and the new ministers waved and smiled to the cameras as they walked through the gates. But the change in power hadn’t led to a ministerial position for James. He had seemed the natural choice for Minister of the Marine. He’d phoned from Dublin the day before to deliver the news and he’d tried to disguise his disappointment with weak dismissals. The man he’d been passed over for – his family had been involved in Irish politics for generations. ‘He was handed that job by his father,’ James said, the only hint he gave of his bitterness. But she was disappointed for him, knew how much he had wanted this, and how it would only serve his belief that the country was run by better men – better educated, better connected – than himself.

Izzy turned down the volume on the television.

‘Hello, Daddy,’ she heard Niall calling from the living room.

‘Come in here, Niall,’ she shouted. ‘Your tea’s ready.’

James was standing in the doorway wearing that padded anorak she hated – the way he wore it over his suit, like a teenager going for his first job interview.

‘Hello, love,’ she said and brandished a smile at him. He looked lost, she thought, like he’d wandered into the wrong house. She poured him a measure of whiskey and handed him the glass.

‘Hello,’ he said and walked straight to the end of the table, where he hung his anorak on the back of the chair.

Under the stairs, she thought, under the stairs. They had the same conversation every evening about him hanging his anorak under the stairs. But she would not engage with any of that now. She took the plates from the oven and served up the food. She carried James’s dinner to him just as he pulled some letters and his diary and keys from the pocket of his anorak and piled them on the table. Say nothing, she said to herself, say nothing.

‘Now,’ she said, placing his dinner before him. She’d prepared lamb chops, carrots, and parsnips – his favourite.

The phone rang and she heard Niall bounding into the hallway. She put the pot of creamed potatoes at the centre of the table and James leaned forward, his nostrils flaring.

‘Colette’s on the phone,’ Niall called.

She wiped her hands on her apron. ‘Tell her we’re just sitting down to the dinner and I’ll give her a ring back later.’

It was the third time Colette had called that day. They had a trip planned. The next day they were driving into the North, to Enniskillen, to do some Christmas shopping. Izzy was bringing Niall and Carl and they would meet Colette. There were other towns that were closer, but on a Saturday just before Christmas they were likely to meet half of Ardglas out shopping and so Colette had convinced her to drive a little farther afield.

Colette had phoned several times a day since the trip to Bundoran. If James asked, Izzy told him it was her other most frequent caller, her friend Margaret Brennan. Sometimes Colette would use the pretence of discussing the workshop – she would ask Izzy if she thought the exercise she’d set had been effective, if the class had responded well to it. But always she would move the conversation on to her gratitude to Izzy for helping her, and the loneliness she was feeling as Christmas approached. When Colette suggested the shopping trip, she said that it might be the only opportunity she’d get to see Carl over the Christmas period, and Izzy had agreed to it with the addendum she placed on every discussion of the subject – that these meetings were not a solution to anything and they’d have to stop.

‘Turn off that television, Niall,’ she said as he walked through the kitchen door.

‘Leave it on,’ James said. ‘It’s good to know what’s going on in the world.’

She saw that the news had moved on and now they were showing a report on the ceasefire in the North. She blessed herself. Two months old and so far it seemed to be holding. But there was no end of talks between political parties and factions and paramilitary groups, and none of them ever seemed to be happy with the outcome.

‘Jesus,’ James said, ‘you never know when it’s going to all kick off again.’

‘Oh now, we have to be grateful for every bit of good news we get.’

‘They’ll never be satisfied – shower of bastards.’

Izzy watched Niall struggle to dislodge the ketchup in the bottle, then with one violent shake of his arm half the contents slid out onto his lamb chops.

‘Look at that waste, you could put most of that back in the bottle,’ she said.