She stared up at the ceiling and tried to remember what she had wished for just seconds ago. But it had left her; all sensible thought had emptied out and pleasure had filled its place. She closed her eyes and gave herself over to it.

*  *  *

‘Have you brought your letters?’ Colette asked. ‘For the new people in the class – I told everyone before Christmas to write a letter as a fictional character to a fictional character. The idea is to wholly conceive of two individual lives and then to imagine how those people might communicate with each other. Let’s hear from one of our more seasoned students first.’

Colette looked around at the blank faces staring back at her. Numbers had almost doubled since the last class. There were even a few people who weren’t from the town. People often made resolutions of this kind, to do something different in the new year, but whether they’d be there next week or not was another story. Still, ten students meant £80 and that was £80 she was in need of.

The door opened and Colette looked over her shoulder, hoping for Izzy to appear, but Helen Flynn came hurrying into the room, head bowed, shoulders bunched together. Helen looked up momentarily and Colette watched the briefest of smiles vanish from her face. It was extraordinary, she thought, how Helen always managed to appear hostile and apologetic at the same time.

‘Don’t worry, Helen,’ Colette said. ‘Just take a seat anywhere.’

Ever since Colette’s outburst at Christmas, Izzy’s tone had been more formal, more matter of fact when they spoke on the phone. Izzy was maintaining a distance and Colette didn’t blame her. But in the past few days Izzy had stopped answering her calls altogether. She’d been looking forward to seeing her in person so she could apologise properly.

She cast her eye around the room again. Eithne was sitting straight-backed on the edge of her seat looking over the rim of her glasses at the pages in her hand. ‘Eithne,’ she said. ‘Would you be kind enough to start us off?’

‘Well, Colette,’ she said, removing her glasses. ‘I tried to imagine my characters as whole beings, as complete entities in and of themselves with independent lives and thoughts and feelings . . .’ She was waving her glasses around in the air as she spoke.

Colette felt herself withdrawing. She looked down at the four mauve circles that marked the underside of her wrist. She kneaded at the bruises with her thumb, and that small discomfort was enough to render her present.

Eithne placed her glasses back on her face and cleared her throat. ‘Dear Eithne,’ she began, ‘I have been observing you for some time; in fact your passage through life has been of great interest to me—’

She has not done what I asked, Colette thought, she has completely ignored the very point of the exercise – the woman is incapable of writing anything that is not about herself.

‘I know that the journey has not been easy,’ Eithne read, ‘but you have fought hard and won many battles and the greatest battle of all has been with yourself. The doubts and fears that slowed your awakening, that meant it took sixty-seven years before you truly realised who you—’

‘Stop,’ Colette shouted. ‘Please, stop.’ She brought her fingers to her lips. Her hand was shaking.

Eithne was frozen in place, still holding the pages in front of her, her eyes now fixed on Colette.

‘I’m very sorry to interrupt you, Eithne.’ She tried to smile. ‘It just occurred to me that we’re missing someone today.’ Everyone was staring at her as though she were about to make some great revelation. ‘Does anyone know if Izzy will be joining us this evening?’

Eithne flashed a look around the room then as if this news of Izzy’s absence was a great surprise to her. ‘I have no idea,’ she said.

‘But has anyone seen her recently?’ Colette asked.

‘I saw her here and there over Christmas,’ Fionnuala said.

‘I was chatting with her at the vegetable man on Saturday,’ Thomas Patterson chimed in, ‘and she seemed in good form, ready to get the creative juices flowing again.’

‘Right so,’ Colette said. ‘Something must have come up for her.’

‘May I continue?’ Eithne asked.

‘Of course,’ Colette said. ‘In fact, would you mind starting from the beginning again, I want to feel the full impact of it.’

And then she listened to Eithne’s account of her birth and her schooling and her various lovers and her spiritual awakening. She registered the waning interest on the faces of the new attendees and regretted having asked Eithne to read first. Helen Flynn wore the look of horror that seized her face when even the remotest sexual reference was made. But no matter how much she told herself to concentrate, Colette could not stop glancing at the entrance where the illuminated exit sign blinked above the door.

Chapter 18

Standing outside the Bishop’s Palace in Letterkenny, it struck James that there was little palatial about it. Lacking any splendour whatsoever, it could have passed for a reformatory, or an orphanage, or a sanatorium. The priest who answered the door surprised James with his youth and energy, welcoming him in with a flourish. ‘You’re very welcome, Mr Keaveney,’ he said, his eyes shining and alert. James guessed he wasn’t long out of the seminary. He followed the priest down a long, tiled hallway, lined with dark wooden side tables holding cut flowers in tall vases. The priest’s jovial chatter accompanied their journey. He spoke of the weather and the approaching spring and the match between Donegal and Meath that was coming up that weekend. ‘Do you follow the football, Mr Keaveney?’ he asked, skipping along with such a lightness of step, like at any moment he might lift off the ground and take flight.

‘If you don’t mind taking a seat there, Mr Keaveney, while I let Bishop Hartigan know you’ve arrived.’

The priest disappeared behind the door and all his warmth and vitality went with him. His noise was replaced by the ticking of the grandfather clock that stood beside James, detailing the passing seconds. The air smelled of furniture polish and boiled vegetables. On the wall opposite, a portrait of a cantankerous-looking clergyman stared out at him. He posed against an indistinct background of light and fog. A bishop or cardinal, he wore a black cape around his shoulders, a heavy gold cross on a long chain rested on his stomach. James turned his eyes to the floor, began to examine the ecclesiastical patterns in the tiles, then made himself look back at the portrait again, to confront the thin-lipped, forbidding face.

His whole life spent in the same town as Shaun Crowley and he’d had little reason to concern himself with the man. Shaun had always set himself apart. Most people in Ardglas had grown up poor, but he’d inherited the fish factory from his father and was as close to old money as they came. He was quiet and reserved whenever you met him, but people talked, of course, calling him a ‘shark’ for buying up the smaller, failing businesses in the town. And then that Monday morning Shaun had visited James at his office, and for the first time he’d seen for himself the threat Shaun Crowley could pose. James knew he’d appeared for no other purpose than to condescend and undermine and humiliate. But James prided himself on the control he maintained over every area of his life, and Shaun Crowley had alerted him to the fact that he’d taken his eye off the ball. For that at least, he could be grateful to him.

The smiling priest emerged, leaving the door ajar. ‘His Grace will see you now, Mr Keaveney.’

An expanse of thick green carpet lay between James and the carved oak desk where the bishop sat with a pen in one hand, rubbing at his forehead with the other. There was a bay window behind him and three tall sash windows reached up to the corniced ceiling. He had turned one corner of the document on his desk towards him and was eyeing it with some hostility. As James crossed the room, he waited for the man to look up at him, to rise to greet him, but he was standing right in front of his desk before the bishop said, ‘Thank you for waiting, Mr Keaveney.’

James had expected the full regalia, like the man in the portrait, but he was dressed as any ordinary priest would be.

‘Now, Mr Keaveney, I am trying to remember if we’ve met before.’

‘Oh, I’m sure we’ve met somewhere down through the years – or we’ve been in the same room on some occasion anyway. You would have done my daughter’s confirmation a few years back.’

‘But I am thinking of some event to do with the Donegal Chamber of Commerce where you gave a speech.’

James remembered the event – it was held in the ballroom at the Central Hotel and there was a lot of free alcohol served to businessmen and local dignitaries, and a complimentary three-course meal – bishops loved that sort of thing.

‘And of course,’ the bishop continued, ‘I heard you on the radio the other morning talking about the Spanish boats invading Irish waters. You spoke very well and I agree that it is important to take a strong position on such things—’

‘Thank you,’ James said, ‘but that’s not what I came to talk to you about.’

‘No, no, I didn’t expect that you had.’ And then he began to move things around on his desk as though he was preparing himself to focus fully on whatever James was about to say. ‘But before we go any further, Mr Keaveney, might I be permitted to ask you a quick question?’

‘Go on.’

‘Well, I hear murmurings from the direction of Dáil Éireann that there is to be another referendum on the matter of divorce.’ The bishop sat back in his chair, joined his hands over his stomach.

‘It seems inevitable that will come around again at some point, yes.’

‘But it wasn’t so long ago that the people of this country voted overwhelmingly to protect the sanctity of marriage.’

‘That was nearly ten years ago, the country’s a very different place now.’

‘I think I understand what you’re trying to say, Mr Keaveney. So I can take it that your own party’s policy would be that—’

‘That in a modern society a man and woman who have spent a suitable period of time apart and who are unable to reconcile should be allowed to end their union if they wish.’

The bishop smiled. ‘Ah, you’re really toeing the party line. But tell me, what do you think is to become of the children of these broken families?’

‘I imagine that will be the decision of their parents.’

‘And what are your own personal views, are they in line with those of your party?’

‘It’s interesting that you should raise the topic of marriage, because that’s exactly what I’ve come to talk to you about.’