‘I’d say as much – because you really came to the right house if you were looking for trouble.’

‘I’m not looking for anything from him – I just want my life back.’

‘And that’s the way to go about it, is it? To have him throwing his leg over you every night? You know he’s had half the women in the town?’

‘And I’m getting the full benefit of his experience.’

‘So that’s what it’s about, is it?’

‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand.’

‘What? You think I can’t see the appeal of a man like Donal Mullen? I’m not blind. He’d be a welcome distraction for any woman. I’d say he’d show you a good time but—’

‘Ha,’ Colette shouted. She smiled and shook her head like she was trying to rid herself of some bitter memory. ‘You have no idea,’ she said, and in that moment it appeared to Izzy that Colette had become entirely sober and lucid, before her eyes glazed over again. ‘Now, let me out of this car,’ Colette demanded.

‘The door’s open, you silly bitch.’

Izzy followed Colette to the door of the cottage, where Colette stood patting the pockets of her coat.

‘Have you lost your keys?’ Izzy asked. She heard a rattling sound and stuck her hand into Colette’s pocket.

‘You can leave me alone now,’ Colette said.

‘Oh, that’s a good one, all right – and then I hear tomorrow that you’ve choked to death on your own sick and I’m never able to forgive myself. Get in there and get into your bed.’

Izzy unlocked the door and ushered Colette inside. Colette careened off, struggling to unbutton her coat. She turned on the bathroom light and Izzy saw her confront her reflection in the mirror, before turning and heading to the bedroom. Izzy looked around the kitchen. The table was covered in newspapers and books and an overflowing ashtray, and she was aware then of the smell of stale smoke and cigarette butts. She walked to the other side of the table and opened the window just a couple of inches and the hush of the sea rushed in. She lifted the ashtray and brought it to the bin, which was surrounded by empty bottles of beer and wine and spirits. A pile of dirty dishes lay on the sideboard. She took a glass and rinsed it out, filled it with water, and carried it to the bedroom, placing it on top of the books stacked beside the bed. Colette had managed to pull her coat and her trainers off and had discarded them on the floor. Otherwise, she’d deposited herself on the bed fully clothed, and was writhing, kicking the bedclothes down to the foot of the bed. Izzy decided that she would be OK sleeping this way. She had no desire to wrestle her out of her clothes.

Colette flopped onto her back and let out a moan.

‘Come on now, Colette,’ Izzy said. ‘You can’t sleep on your back. Roll over onto your side.’ She leaned over and put her hand behind Colette’s shoulder and pulled, and her body relented. Once Colette was on her side Izzy walked back to the kitchen and found a bowl under the sink. She placed it on the floor beside the bed. The agitation in Colette’s body had quelled. She’d drawn her knees towards her chest, but still it was like her whole body was softly rolling, like she was trying to shed her skin. Izzy smoothed Colette’s hair away from her face and went and turned the bathroom light off. She sat in a chair by the window and looked at the sea and watched a thin strip of cloud creep slowly across the moon. She listened out for the little moans released by Colette, growing further and further apart. And the memory of Donal Mullen’s face, looking away, flashed across her mind, before her thoughts turned to Daniel Brennan. Every time she had ever met him in his whole life, he was smiling politely, but he was always looking at the world askance. And she wondered if he was asleep at that moment – if it was even possible for him to fall asleep. Or was he always just thinking, turning those thoughts over and over in his mind – trying to keep himself awake in case the darkness consumed him entirely.

*  *  *

The next morning she awoke in some confusion, surprised to find herself still sleeping in the spare bedroom. There was a dull light filtering through the thin curtains and she expected that beyond them lay another grey day. In her mind hung a vision of Niall in his school uniform, quietly creeping towards her. Then she heard an engine start, the car pulling away from the front of the house. James would be taking Niall to school and then he would be off to Dublin for work.

When she had returned home last night, she’d forgotten for a moment that she was not sleeping with James, had not spoken to him for weeks, and had placed one foot on the bottom stair before she remembered. But the momentum had remained in her body, the desire to propel herself upstairs and wake him and tell him that really they were lucky – to have their home and their children, and yes, to have each other. Really, they had so much. And what was the good in screaming the house down and blaming and making each other so unhappy over two people who had nothing to do with them? They could move on from this, was what she wanted to say to him.

She sat up in the bed, reached out for the book on her nightstand, but her hand just rested on its hard cover. She could not bring herself to lift it, to open the pages, the investment required felt too great. And she could not spend another day alone in the house. There was only one person she wanted to speak to, to be in the company of, and the need for him felt so strong that it smothered any other concern. She showered and dressed. She put on an Alice band, pushed the wizened ends of her hair behind her ears. Before she left the house she checked herself in the hall mirror, in her brightly coloured jumper, the collar of her white blouse peeking up from underneath. She wore her pearls. She applied a slick of lipstick so similar to the colour of her own lips it was like wearing nothing.

It was unusual for her to go to the parochial house to visit Brian and so she brought the three novels she’d borrowed from him to give her some excuse. It had been at least six weeks since they’d spoken to each other and she had not tried to phone him and he had not, as far as she knew, tried to phone her. The only time she’d laid eyes on him was when he stood before her at the altar on a Sunday morning. Driving along the bridge into the town, she tried to think of what she would say to him. The sky held the same dull uniformity it had all week, so unusual for this time of year, when you could expect every type of weather in a single hour. There was no variation between one day and the next. And surely she would lead with something like this. ‘Well, will it ever end, this winter?’ she could say, smiling and shaking her head, before he even had a chance to say hello. He was used to this. She never said what she really meant at first, but she recognised how keenly he saw her. And she would allow herself to be drawn out. She would probably tell him something of the difficulties she and James were having. But she could not imagine speaking in any frank way about her dealings with Colette, about the shopping trips and the fights they had caused.

‘You have no idea.’ She had spent months aiding and listening and investing so fully in the life of a woman she barely knew and all that woman had done was turn to her and say, You don’t understand what desire is. To be rid of this resentment she felt for someone who had been reduced to nothing, to be free of the smallness and pettiness of that – and yet the need was present to let him know something of how she had witnessed Colette drunk out of her mind in the hotel bar the previous night. She could hear herself coming sideways at the topic, telling him she was exhausted. From what? he’d ask, and she’d mention about having to drive Colette home and about Donal Mullen waiting on her doorstep. ‘Adultery’ – they talked about so much and yet she could never remember them using this word. Even when it happened in the books they read, they steered clear of the issue. And as she pulled up in the church car park, she warned herself to avoid the subject of Colette – her need to lower Colette in his estimation was too strong. She could simply spend the afternoon with him in silence and it would give her pleasure. She could allow herself to be buoyed upon his warmth, the gentle way he had of poking fun at her; better to spend the afternoon like that than to breathe a single word of Colette. She did not need to help her anymore, she did not need to participate in her life, but it was better to pretend that Colette had never existed than to try to reduce the woman any further.

There was a large white van parked at the front of the parochial house. All of the windows were open like some kind of spring-cleaning was going on, but she thought that a bit premature. She took the books and got out of the car, and as she approached the house two men walked out the front door, each carrying a cardboard box. The priest’s housekeeper, Stasia Toomey, stepped out the front door and watched the men load the boxes onto the back of the van. She wore a floral apron tied so tightly her stomach and bosom were pushed together into one great lump. Stasia had noticed her from across the car park, and even from that distance, Izzy could read the look of annoyance on her face. By the time Izzy reached her, she had focused her attentions on the workmen once again.

‘Mind that now,’ she said to a young fellow carrying another box out of the house. ‘Ah hello, Izzy, how are you?’ she said, as if Izzy’s presence was a great surprise to her. ‘Is that the last of it?’ she asked the elder of the two workmen.

‘No,’ he said, walking back into the house, ‘there’s about a dozen more boxes.’

‘You couldn’t keep a close enough eye on them,’ Stasia said. ‘He doesn’t have that much stuff altogether but it would all be thrown in the back of that van with no consideration whatsoever if someone didn’t direct them. And then of course it would arrive with everything in tatters – and who’d get the blame for that?’ she said, poking herself in the chest.

‘What in the name of God’s going on, Stasia?’

‘What’s going on? We’re getting a new priest,’ she said, a note of satisfaction in her voice.

‘What do you mean we’re getting a new priest?’

‘He’s gone,’ Stasia said, pronouncing the words loudly and clearly for there to be no further discussion of the matter. ‘Mind that,’ she said to the younger fellow, who was pushing an office chair out the door. ‘Ah, can you not lift it? The wheels’ll get scratched!’

‘Gone where?’

‘Well, this stuff is being sent to Claremorris so that would be a good place to start looking, I suppose. Anyway, you’d know more than I would. I was told nothing other than to arrange for his things to be sent on. I came here on Monday and everything was packed up and ready to go. And the new priest arrives in a couple of days and in the meantime I have to get the whole house cleaned and ready for him and you’d swear there were ten of me.’ She sighed and folded her arms. ‘But all I can say is that he was always a gentleman towards me. I never had any problems with him.’ She fussed with the neck of her housecoat when she said this.

Izzy watched the workmen ferrying the boxes from the house to the van.

‘Do you want me to take those?’ Stasia asked.

Izzy stared at her.

‘Those?’ Stasia said, pointing.

Izzy looked down at the three books she held against her side. ‘Oh . . . yes,’ she said, placing her palms against the top and bottom of the pile and carefully handing the books to Stasia, who made a great show of taking them into her arms, like they were much heavier than they really were.

‘I’ll make sure they get to him,’ she said, but she had already turned away from Izzy and was supervising the workmen again, her arms wrapped around the books so they were pressed to her chest, their spines peeping out at Izzy. She turned and began to walk, her arms swinging empty and heavy at her sides. Aware that Stasia was probably watching, she steadied her step and lifted her head, focusing her gaze on her car.

Sitting in the driver’s seat, fastening her seat belt, she heard the doors of the van slam shut, but she could not bring herself to look over at it. To have phoned that morning – that was the thing to have done. How much easier it would have been to hide her alarm and confusion over the phone instead of making a fool of herself in front of Stasia Toomey. Because the whole town would be talking about the priest’s disappearance, and now Stasia would add to that the last-minute arrival of Izzy Keaveney on the scene – how she’d nearly dropped down dead in front of the parochial house when she heard the news. Everyone must have known about his departure already but her. Did James know? she wondered.

She heard the engine of the van starting and some gruff shout echo between the workmen.

Of course he knew, she thought. Of course he knew.

Chapter 20

Eric’s little body was still warm from his bath when Dolores carried him into the sitting room, swaddled in a towel, and laid him down on his changing mat. The water in the tub had soothed the eczema on her hands and she’d slathered them in lotion, and it felt good now to have them occupied in some activity. She pulled her son’s toes and smiled at him and tried not to think of the red welts that bealed between her knuckles.

Madeleine bounded into the room. Dolores knew it was her without looking up, from the frantic swish of her jeans, the breathless energy she carried. Madeleine had been pursuing her all day.

‘Please can I go to Glenties on Friday?’ she asked, for what felt like the hundredth time.

Dolores had calmly resolved not to get angry with her daughter. There had been so much silence and anger in their house these past few months that, where it was possible, she was determined to be gentle and patient with her children.

‘Why can’t I go?’ Madeleine pushed.

‘Because you’re too good-looking,’ Dolores said. ‘They’ll all be after you at that disco.’

And she meant this in a way. Madeleine was turning out to be beautiful – a much finer version of herself. Where her curls were dry and dense, Madeleine’s were soft and silken. Where Dolores’s body tapered, Madeleine’s curved. And if she was anything like Dolores, she was probably fertile too.

‘So you’re jealous?’ Madeleine said. ‘You can’t have any fun anymore, so I’m not allowed to either.’