Dolores stood there blinking at her.

‘Is something wrong?’ Colette asked.

‘Your husband’s on the phone,’ she said, and disappeared into the house.

Colette stepped into the hall and picked up the receiver. ‘Hello, Shaun?’

‘Don’t come to the house tomorrow,’ he said.

She looked down at the black and white tiles of the hallway and they seemed to swim away from her, to melt into a grey blur.

‘What are you talking about, Shaun?’ She tried to laugh but it came out breathless with desperation. She wrapped the cord of the telephone around her finger. ‘Has something happened?’

‘I think . . . given the circumstances . . . it would not be appropriate for you to come to the house tomorrow.’

Colette looked around her and saw Dolores standing in the living room doorway with her back to her, bouncing the baby on her hip. Every doorframe in the hallway and every picture frame she could see was fringed in gold tinsel, including the wedding photo of Donal and Dolores that hung above the hallstand. Colette turned to the wall. She gripped the receiver with both hands and pressed it close to her mouth. ‘Jesus Christ, Shaun, please have the decency to tell me what’s going on,’ she whispered.

‘I didn’t think it possible . . . I didn’t think . . . of all the things you’ve done, to ask our son to lie to me . . .’

Cartoon gunfire rang out from the television in the living room.

‘Shaun, please, just let me bring the presents out to the house in the morning, we can talk about all of this.’

‘If you had seen how upset he was . . . asking a child to keep a secret like that. What were you thinking?’ He was spitting the words out. ‘Shopping trips, and walks on the beach – you were having a right old time, weren’t you?’

‘I am not going to defend myself for needing to spend time with my—’

‘You’ve been drinking, haven’t you?’

‘Shaun . . .’

‘I will thank you to stay away from the house tomorrow and not go spoiling Christmas for the boys.’

‘Shaun, you can’t keep—’ She was shouting but the line was dead and Donal was standing at the end of the hallway staring directly at her. He was half in shadow, half in the light from the kitchen. He gave one slow nod. She looked at the receiver in her hand, still so close to her face she could hear the dead tone ringing off. She hung up and turned around and Dolores was facing her now, but she was not looking at her. She was staring at the tiles where Colette saw that she’d left muddy footprints all the way from the door to the phone.

‘I’m sorry, Dolores,’ she said, and she hated the sound of her voice, smothered in its own soft obsequiousness. She walked slowly to the door, her feet making a squelching noise in her sopping plimsolls. She looked up at the cottage and saw the roof of her car just visible above the wall, and she thought about grabbing her keys and driving out to Shaun. She would confront him. They would have this out. A wind caught the cord of her dressing gown and lifted it and she looked down at her wet feet. She remembered then that she’d been drinking. How much she could not say, but too much to get in a car and arrive on the doorstep for a fight with her husband that would likely frighten their eleven-year-old son.

But none of this made sense to her. When she had last seen Carl in Enniskillen, he had seemed so happy and content, and he would have been looking forward to her coming the next day.

‘Will you close that door, you’re letting the heat out,’ Dolores said.

‘Dolores, I need to make a phone call.’

Colette heard her tut – the gall of the woman.

‘You’re making a wild lot of phone calls recently. I might have to start charging you for that,’ Dolores said.

Colette ignored her and lifted the receiver. She knew the number off by heart.

‘31470 – who’s speaking, please?’ Izzy answered in that pretentious way of hers, the shrill little uplift at the end of the question.

‘Did you tell him?’ Colette demanded.

‘Excuse me?’

‘Did you tell him?’ Each word was fired from her mouth.

‘What are you going on about, Colette?’

‘Shaun knows. He knows about all of it. He said it was Carl who told him but somebody else must have said something. We were supposed to see each other tomorrow, why would he go blabbing to his father now?’

‘Oh, Colette,’ Izzy said.

‘Was it you who told him?’

Izzy sighed. ‘Well, as God is my witness, I never said a word to him, and what desire would I have to go bringing trouble into someone’s house on Christmas Eve?’

‘Well, all I know is that I was supposed to be spending tomorrow with my sons and now I’m banned from my own house.’

‘But you knew the child was going to say something eventually.’

‘I knew no such thing.’

‘Colette – I don’t know what to say to you. Go home and sober up.’

Her throat felt hot then, so many words trying to crowd their way into her mouth.

‘Colette, I’m not an idiot – anyone would know from talking to you that you have drink taken. Get some rest. Have you enough food in the house for tomorrow?’

She slammed down the receiver and when she turned around Donal was standing just a few feet away, his arms folded, staring at her. She’d rarely seen him in anything other than work clothes and now he was wearing a smart shirt and jeans. He was clean-shaven and his hair was slicked back with gel.

‘Is there some kind of bother?’ he asked.

She noticed that the living room door was closed now but she could still make out Dolores’s slight figure through the panes of frosted glass.

‘No, Donal. There’s nothing wrong. I’m sorry for disturbing you. Happy Christmas. I hope it all goes well tomorrow.’

She walked out the door and then she heard him say her name, and turned to face him.

He moved closer. ‘You’re half-cut,’ he said. ‘Don’t come down here again like that.’

She was still staring at him when the door slammed shut in her face.

It was difficult to maintain her balance climbing back up the rain-soaked hill. Near the top she pitched forward onto her hands and felt them sinking into the wet ground. She dug her feet into the well-worn footholds and clawed at the earth to stop herself from sliding back down. When she tried to move forward, the mud sucked off one plimsoll, then the second. She finished her journey barefoot, and as soon as she got into the house, she tore off her jumper and dressing gown and jeans and stepped into the shower and turned it up to the highest temperature. She let out great gasps as the heat engulfed her. But the hot water lasted only a minute or two, and she turned off the tepid dribble and stepped out of the shower, leaving a pool of dirty brown water to drain away. She wrapped a clean white towel around her and walked to the kitchen sink to retrieve her glass of wine but then she saw Shaun’s present lying on the table. She tore off the paper and unscrewed the lid, filled a glass tumbler almost to overflowing, and took a long draught. She stared out the window at the beach. The sea had almost absorbed the last of the weak blue light that lay over it like a shroud. She felt steadied, watching the water soaking up the last of the day as the whiskey warmed her.

She walked to the bed and lay down. In the morning she could, if she wanted, get in her car and make the four-hour drive to her mother’s house. But she still lived in hope that Ronan would visit her. And then she remembered how happy her mother had been when she’d told her she was spending the day with Shaun and the boys. She had made plans then to spend Christmas with her sister and her husband and their teenage daughters. And Colette would not do that. She would not sit with her sister and her mother judging her for an entire day. That was something she could not suffer. She closed her eyes. She would rather sleep until St Stephen’s Day.

When she woke again the sky beyond her window was a featureless black canvas. She heard the soft crunch of stones on the road outside. Footsteps stopped at the door and then she heard the three slow, steady knocks, a key sliding into the latch. She looked down the length of her body, wrapped in the towel. A draught passed through the room and her skin came alive with the cold sting of it. She heard the front door close and then saw the full shape of him through the open bedroom door. He wore the hood up on his coat and he looked taller and broader, almost taking up the whole doorway. He panted as he bent to unlace his boots and then there was the sound of one boot dropping on the stone floor, the second. She thought about moving, of making some effort to stir, but a leaden stillness held her down on the bed.