‘What’s that?’

‘I said, I’m six weeks gone.’

Izzy stiffened. She stepped back from Colette and ran her eye up and down the length of her. ‘What are you talking about?’ she asked.

‘Do you think I’m joking? I’m nearly two months pregnant,’ Colette said.

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’ve missed my period, I’ve done two tests – I haven’t been to the doctor’s yet, but I’m sure,’ Colette said.

Izzy caught her hand, pinched it between her thumb and middle finger; the impulse to strike Colette was so strong. ‘You stupid fucking woman,’ she said under her breath, dropping back down into her seat.

‘I know, I know, I know,’ Colette said. Her whole body appeared to shake. ‘I’m the stupidest fucking woman who’s ever lived.’

‘How did you let this happen?’ she asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Colette said, ‘maybe I thought I was past it.’

‘And it’s his?’ Izzy nodded her head in the direction of the Mullens’ house.

‘Of course it’s fucking his,’ Colette shouted.

Izzy looked at the vodka bottle on the counter. ‘But what are you going to do?’ she asked.

‘I’m going to go and stay with my mother for a while.’

‘Right, that seems like a sensible enough idea.’

‘But I need your help . . . Again . . . I’m sorry. I need to borrow a bit of money.’

‘To get you to Dublin?’

‘No.’ Colette shook her head. ‘It needs to get me a bit farther than that. I’d need a few hundred pounds maybe.’

Izzy looked down at the table.

‘I can’t have this child,’ Colette continued. ‘I’ve thought about it, believe me. But there’s no place for me in the world right now, let alone a baby.’

‘You still have a husband.’

‘Oh, Izzy, Shaun won’t even let me see the children I have, do you really think he’s going to take me back and help me rear another man’s child?’

‘He wouldn’t be the first man who’s done that. And can your mother not help you?’

‘How do I ask my mother for the money to have an abortion?’

‘And yet you have no problem asking me.’

‘Do you think if there was any other possible way that I’d be asking you? And please don’t make me go down to that man and beg from him again.’

‘Who? Shaun?’

‘No. Donal.’

‘You’ve told him?’

‘I know – it was stupid. I knew he’d no more care for it than if it was something washed up on the beach. But he was trying to get me out of the cottage. He wanted rid of me altogether. I was fool enough to think that if I told him he might take pity on me.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘He told me to get rid of the child, that if I brought it back to the town, he’d kill me.’

‘Colette, Donal Mullen can’t make you get rid of your child. And you can’t go running off to England like a teenager.’

‘That’s it, Izzy. I’m not a teenager. I’m forty-four years old.’

Izzy rose from her seat. She lifted her handbag from where it rested on the top of the box of objects. She opened the bag and took three crisp £20 notes from her purse. ‘Colette – pack up your things and get in your car. There’s enough money there to get you to Dublin. Go and see your mother. Go and have your child. I promise you for as long as I live I’ll never breathe a word of this to anyone. No one ever has to know who the father is if you don’t want them to.’

Izzy placed the notes on the table and watched Colette’s eyes drift towards them. She walked to the door and let herself out.

Sitting in her car, she looked back at the cottage. A barrel stood under the eaves, to collect whatever rainwater overflowed from the gutters, she guessed. She recalled the conversation they’d had, when James joked that Colette had been reduced to washing from a barrel.

‘Well, you know what those artistic types are like,’ she’d said, playing along.

‘Yes,’ he’d said. ‘That’s what poets do.’ And not for the first time they’d laughed over the misfortunes of Colette Crowley.

*  *  *

That evening when James Keaveney stepped through the front door of his home, he registered a change in the atmosphere. For months he’d come back to find the place empty, or with half the lights on and his wife and son sequestered in some corner of the house. Tonight, there was movement and activity, brightness and warmth. He walked down the hallway and stopped at the kitchen door.

‘There you are,’ his wife said, passing with a bundle of placemats, throwing a smile in his direction. ‘Niall,’ she shouted.

James patted down his pockets, looking for his wallet or his keys or something he’d lost – he didn’t know. Realising he was still wearing his coat, he went to hang it under the stairs.

‘I got a few lamb chops from Breslin’s this afternoon,’ his wife said, and he followed the sound of her voice back into the kitchen, looked over to where his son was now seated at the table, swinging his legs back and forth and eyeing him suspiciously.

‘Oh, great,’ he said, and he could hear the forced enthusiasm in his voice. He took his seat at the head of the table.

A plate of food was placed in front of him – boiled potatoes neat as balls of soap, glistening green broccoli, lamb chops still sizzling from the pan.

‘Now,’ his wife said, taking her place at the table and laying a dishcloth across her lap.

And then she proceeded to talk, to confound him with chatter. She spoke of the people she had encountered while running her errands, the price of petrol, the news story about politicians accepting bribes.

‘Eat your dinner,’ she said. ‘It’ll get cold.’

He had not touched his food.