He had known it was Dolores from the moment she stepped into the confessional. Not only was she a religious woman who came to confession regularly – the mother and father and five sisters were all religious – but she had a head of hair on her so outsized it almost filled the entire compartment. He could see the haze of frizz in what little light filtered through the darkness.

‘He is unfaithful, Father,’ she continued. ‘He has been unfaithful many times. But this time I think that it’s with . . . well, I know that . . . I know that it’s with one of our . . . neighbours.’

Brian tried to think who in the vicinity of Donal Mullen’s house he might be riding. There were no other houses that close as far as he could remember.

‘He used to at least have the decency to do it away from home, to do it far enough away from me and our children, but now he has so little respect for me that he doesn’t even care if I know he’s going next door for it.’

And then he knew exactly who it was. She’d phoned him not two days previously to tell him she was no longer able to read at mass and hung up on him before he’d had a chance to respond.

‘And I think some night when he’s sleeping, I’m just going to get the knife out of the drawer in the kitchen and stick it in his back.’

It was amazing what people were trying to tell you if you really listened. Dolores was not so much concerned with being absolved of her sins as letting him know that her husband was not a good man. He might come to mass on Sundays and bounce his children on his knee, but Dolores was here to let the priest know that any positive impression that might give was false. And it was what Izzy was trying to tell him with that anecdote about the flower shop. She was saying, you know that man who laughs at your jokes and breaks bread with you and plays golf with you on the weekends? Well, that man is capable of selfishness and cruelty and because he will not confess to that, I’ll do it for him. And by going to the parish priest they were going straight to the top – they were telling the moral arbiter of their lives that their husbands were bad men. It astonished him, the deference priests were still shown, that even in this day and age men like Donal Mullen and James Keaveney would be mortified about the parish priest knowing what bastards they were.

As if he hadn’t guessed already.

And so he thought that one of his main roles in the parish was as a conduit for people’s resentments. Through him the powerless were able to wage some small revenge.

‘Oh, Dol . . . Dear, have you tried speaking to your husband about your suspicions?’

There was a silence then so long and pervasive that he looked through the grille to be sure she hadn’t left.

‘I’m five months pregnant, Father,’ she said.

‘Well then,’ he said, and began to bless her.

‘What about my penance, Father?’ she asked.

He sighed. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘I’d say you have enough on your plate at the moment.’

‘Thank you, Father,’ she said.

He thought that Dolores might be his last confession but he waited a few minutes. He couldn’t go sticking his head out the door to see who was there or else the illusion would be broken. When he was confident that no one else was coming he stepped out of the confessional and left the church.

As he walked up the driveway that connected the church grounds to the parochial house he thought about Donal and Dolores Mullen – May she slice him into ribbons while he sleeps, he said to himself. During his time in the Guards he’d dealt with more incidents of domestic violence than he cared to remember, and now he was a priest all he did was deal with domestics.

As he unlocked the door of his car a few flakes of snow began to fall. He sat in the seat and closed the door and stared up at the little icy clumps, gliding down so slow and separate it was like some invisible hand was casting down each one. The sky had been threatening it all day, in its flat grey frigidity. There came more snow, fuller, faster, but each flake vanished as soon as it met with the wet ground, and he decided to continue with his plan.

He had not seen Izzy all over the Christmas period. It was a family time, but he guessed that at this stage James would be back at work and the kids would be back at school. Whenever he heard an interesting confession the first person he thought of was Izzy. He wanted to relay the details to her, to discuss it with her, to laugh over it – but his conscience forbade him. Izzy was great fun, and irreverent, and the only person in the town who didn’t treat him like a priest. When you first arrived in a new parish every person of note would invite you for Sunday dinner, and he was not surprised when an invitation was extended by the local politician. What he had not expected was how close he would become to the Keaveneys, Izzy in particular, in the short time he’d been in the town.

It had not taken him long to realise something was off in the fabric of the Keaveneys’ marriage. Even at the first lunch he shared with them, they had bickered openly, and if they couldn’t even remember to put on a good show for the parish priest then things must really be bad. But their behaviour towards each other varied so much from week to week, it was hard to know what to expect. On the good occasions James seemed to take pride in his wife’s quick wit, and at such times Izzy accepted his deference with a coquettish bat of her eyelashes. At other times James was impatient with his wife, bristled when she spoke. There was a theatrical quality to Izzy’s character that seemed to embarrass him. Izzy, on the other hand, found her husband to be pompous and insincere and followed up his statements with snide remarks. And Brian admired her tenacity. It fell just short of open hostility, but how unlike the other meek housewives of the parish she was, who in the face of far weaker opponents than James Keaveney spoke of nothing more contentious than the weather. It was uncomfortable, however. Still, Izzy was a good cook and the conversation was less stilted and the atmosphere less stuffy than other homes he had been in. And he’d obviously passed some kind of test, because not long after they first met, James invited him to play in a four-ball at the golf club.

They had both hit balls into the rough and were separated from the other players when James, head down, taking practice swipes at the ball, explained that things were not good between him and Izzy.

‘She has the depression,’ he said, not looking up. ‘It comes on her from time to time, and when it does, I’m to blame for everything. She’s like a briar. There’s no talking to her.’

He’d waited for James to say more.

‘Maybe you’d have a word with her. Don’t say that I said anything. But she won’t listen to me.’

He was surprised by James’s openness. But again, he listened carefully for what he was really being told. That woman you think is hilarious, housewife of the year? She’s mad in the head. It was his experience that a man often thought his wife insane when she expressed unhappiness with her lot. Brian told James that he would speak to Izzy. He was glad to have an excuse to spend more time with her.

Izzy was sharp. She guessed that the priest had been sent to pull her out of her funk. And so she was more open about her problems than she might otherwise have been. If her husband had told the parish priest that she was being difficult, then she was going to be equally open about his shortcomings.

On one occasion she told him, ‘James likes you because you’re a man’s man. The last priest we had in the parish was a bit . . .’ She extended her arm and let her hand flop down from the wrist.

‘That doesn’t surprise me, the seminary was full of them.’

‘Oh yeah – that’s where you’d meet them, all right – but anyway, this fellow, Father Slattery, you might know him, he made a bit of a show of himself. He wasn’t into the priest bit at all. All he did was go around the parish eating and drinking in people’s houses and gossiping with women. He was mad for a party. Well, he took an awful shine to me altogether, thought I was great craic, and he was calling to the house the whole time. James ran him a few times because he thought he was keeping me from making the dinner. Anyway, we used to have the most unmerciful rows over him.’

‘Why? Did James think he was some kind of threat?’

She laughed. ‘He did not – he said to me one day, “Izzy, that man is as bent as a hoop” – may God forgive him.’

They both laughed then.

‘So what was the problem?’ he asked.

He remembered her eyes at this moment, the keenness in them, the way her look seemed to tilt at him. ‘That was the problem,’ she said. ‘He was ridiculous. And James was worried he would make him look ridiculous, that people would be laughing at him behind his back. That’s James’s biggest fear – embarrassment, being made a fool of.’

As his car budged its way across the narrow bridge that led to the road where the Keaveneys lived, he could barely see through the snow, his entire vision filled with its slow, continuous cascade.

Pulling up in the driveway, he imagined the conversation he would never have with Izzy about Donal and Dolores Mullen.

‘And he’s riding Colette Crowley and Dolores is going to kill him.’

‘Ah, will you stop,’ she’d say, or, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be good enough for him.’

Through the snow he could just make out James’s green Toyota parked at the side of the house and only then did he realise how much he’d been hoping to be alone with Izzy. They had probably heard his car coming up the drive, so he would have to go in and say hello, but he decided that he would not stay for very long.

He checked in the back seat for his coat but realised he’d left without it and when he looked through the windscreen again the snow had reduced to a few flakes falling so slowly it was like they were suspended in midair. He was about to make a dash to the front door when he saw the shapes of two figures through the kitchen window, like shadows playing on a wall, miming aggression, coming together and drawing apart. And then the taller of the two broke off decisively and disappeared and a moment later the front door opened and James was standing there staring at him. He waited for a moment but when it became clear James had no intention of moving, he stepped out of the car and approached him.

‘You’ve come at a bad time,’ James said.

‘Is everything all right?’

‘Yeah, we’ll be fine.’

‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘Yeah,’ James said, curling his finger, indicating for him to move closer. He took one step towards him and James spoke into his ear. ‘Fuck off and interfere in someone else’s marriage.’

The door slammed in his face. He heard James shout something and Izzy responding, and then there was silence. He lifted his fist to knock on the door but his hand fell limp at his side. He walked to his car, and just as he started the engine, he saw the curtains on the kitchen window sweep closed.

Chapter 17

Colette extended her leg beyond the bed covers and pointed her toe at the ceiling. Donal pulled the sheets across her hip and wrapped his arm around her. She placed her mouth on his and slowly lowered her leg back down onto the bed.

‘Another one,’ he said. ‘Come on.’