‘No!’ She laughed. ‘It’s cruel.’

‘Ah, go on, sure it’s only the pair of us.’

‘It’s still cruel.’

‘What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.’

‘Are you banking on that philosophy?’

‘Don’t go getting all serious on me now.’

She felt around on the floor beside the bed for another letter and handed one to him.

He began to read: ‘“Dublin, the twelfth of December 1994.” Two days since the last one – Jesus, does he not have anything better to do? “Colette – today I saw a family returning from a day out.”’ He read in a breathy voice. ‘“They pulled up on the street outside with an evergreen poking from the boot of the car. I watched them haul the tree from the boot, a collective effort, spraying pine needles everywhere as they went.” For fuck’s sake, this fellow needs help. “I thought about what we would be doing this time of year if you had stayed. I look at the people who surround me and my life now and I think of how lacking in colour and texture it is” – well, that’s enough for me.’ He shredded the letter with his fingers and threw the scraps up in the air so they cascaded down upon her.

‘Will you stop,’ she shouted and laughed and rolled up onto his chest, looked him straight in the eye.

‘Next!’ he roared and pushed her over onto her side of the bed and placed his weight upon her. He reached for another letter.

‘No,’ she screamed. She tried to wrestle with him but he pinned her arms down with his elbows and placed the letter right in her face.

‘The twelfth of Never 1994,’ he said. ‘Oh, Colette, I am dreaming of your breasts. Every night I see them dangling in front of me like ripe peaches covered in soft, downy fuzz—’

‘Donal – I asked you to stop.’

‘And I am driven so wild by desire that I practically explode all over the walls of the house – the house that you abandoned me in.’ He tore the letter in half and threw the two parts aside with a flourish.

She watched him pick a tiny scrap of paper from her hair and present it to her on the tip of his finger.

‘Make a wish,’ he said.

She puffed out her lips and the scrap floated down onto the bed covers. She stared up at him, drew a knuckle along his jawline, felt the scrape of stubble, and touched her finger to his mouth. ‘That was very good,’ she said. ‘You really captured his voice. In fact, I would say you were even better than him. Now, let’s leave the poor man in peace.’

‘Was he good for something, at least?’ he asked.

She sat up, sighed, looked around for her tobacco. ‘Passable,’ she said.

‘Only passable? That’s some report.’

‘What do you want me to say – that the earth moved?’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t want you to say that. Describe him to me.’

She wrapped her arms around her knees. ‘Well, he was a professor of linguistics and—’

‘Ah no, I don’t care about any of that shite. What did he look like?’

She considered this for a moment, tried to make her memories of him coalesce in her mind. ‘Well, he was tall. And he had a thick head of hair but it was almost all grey. But a nice shade of grey – not a wizened-old-man grey, it still had some life in it. And he wore glasses with black frames, and he had a kind of beaked nose—’

‘Jesus, he sounds like a real looker – go on,’ he said, ‘more detail.’

‘Oh look, Donal, I told you already I don’t want to talk about this anymore. We’ve had a good laugh at the man’s expense, now can we just drop the subject?’

He shifted onto his elbow, and she felt the full force of his attention round upon her.

‘Riddled with remorse, are you?’ he said.

She tried to focus on the pale yellow sunlight streaming through the window.

‘We both know the only reason you came back to this town was ’cause you bet on the wrong horse,’ he said.

‘I told you already that—’

‘Ah yeah – you told me you were unhappy, that you were bored. Join the fucking club, Colette. Do you think that makes you special? It doesn’t mean you run off and ride the first poor fucker who comes along.’

‘It’s what you’ve done.’

He gripped her arm and she felt his fingers bed down deep in her flesh.

‘Don’t you get high and mighty with me,’ he said. ‘I have three children and I know where each of them is right now. Can you say the same?’

‘You wouldn’t understand.’

‘Why? Because I’m not a professor? I understand that there are some mothers who’d tear the eyes out of anyone who tried to keep them from their kids. That they’d do anything to be with them. And all you do is lie here with me in the middle of the day. So don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.’

‘I never came to you looking for sympathy.’

‘No, Colette, you’ve only ever come to me looking for the one thing. So let’s not make this complicated.’

He let go of her wrist and she felt his hand slide across her stomach. She gasped at the coldness of his touch, shut her eyes.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘tell me what he looked like.’

Like being rocked on a current of air, she felt herself glide back down onto the bed.

‘Why do you need to know this?’ she asked.

‘So in case he ever shows up here, I’ll recognise him. Now, go on.’

‘And what would you do if he showed up?’

He reached down between her legs. ‘What would I do to him if he showed up on my property?’ His breath was hot against her face. ‘What would I do if he came sniffing around here?’ He placed his mouth so close to her ear, it was like his voice was sounding from inside her head. ‘I’d fucking kill him. Is that what you want me to say?’

‘That’s not what I want.’

‘If he showed up here, I’d pull one of the stones off of the wall out there and cave his fucking head in.’

‘That’s not what I want.’