‘And that’s the truth,’ she said. ‘But that’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m not trying to blame you. I’m trying to say that . . . well, I almost left him. I was almost out the door. Bags packed. I’d seen a solicitor. I’d even told James. We’d had the talk.’

‘And what changed your mind?’

She stared down into her cup. ‘Colette,’ she said.

He sat up and hunched over, placing his palms together between his knees. ‘That was a terrible thing,’ he said, his voice directed at the floor.

‘You’ve heard?’

‘The whole country’s heard. I’ve said more prayers for that woman in the past few weeks.’

‘And Christ, she needed every one of them. If you’d seen the way she ended up. She had nothing. Alone in that cottage. Out of her mind with drink. Pregnant.’

He raised his head and looked at her.

‘That’s what she told me,’ Izzy said. ‘I visited her on the day before she died, and she sat in front of me, and told me she was nearly two months pregnant and Donal Mullen was the father.’

She watched something change in his expression, some unfolding of a thought.

‘And she asked me for money. To get away. She’d told him about the child and he’d threatened her. And do you know what I did?’ She smiled. ‘I gave her sixty pounds.’ She spoke the amount slowly. ‘That was noble of me, wasn’t it? How far would that get you? And honestly, if you’d seen her, how wretched she was – any decent person would have bundled her into the car and taken her home with them.’

‘And have you gone to the Guards?’

She shook her head. ‘See, I knew for a while that they’d been carrying on. I’d met her down in the bar of the Harbour View one night and she was drunk as a skunk. I practically had to drag her out of the place. And when I dropped her off at the cottage, he was standing there at the door waiting for her. I mean, he scarpered as soon as he saw me – but that’s how familiar they were with each other, that he could just crawl out of his bed at night and saunter up there. And my God – if ever there was a pair designed to cause trouble for each other. He’d throw his leg over anything, that fella, and she’d taken to the drink so badly I wouldn’t say she even knew who was coming through the door some nights.’

‘But I don’t understand. Why haven’t you told all of this to the Guards? Does James know?’

‘Of course he knows – but you can imagine what he thinks about the whole thing, that as soon as it becomes public knowledge the wife of a TD is involved all of the focus will be on us. As you well know, that’s James’s biggest fear – scandal.’

‘So he’s stopping you from coming forward?’

‘He’s not stopping me from doing anything. He wouldn’t dare at the moment. We’ve only just patched things up. But he’s not exactly full of encouragement either. He says that if they need to speak to us, they’ll be in touch.’

‘Well, that’s nonsense, Izzy. Why would they start an investigation if they have no reason to?’

‘But I have no real proof.’

‘And that’s as it may be but if you tell them what you know they might find proof. They’ll question Donal again. They’ll search his house. What’s really stopping you?’

It was as though someone had their hand on her back and was pressing her to the ground. She wrapped her arms around herself and folded in two. ‘I’m so frightened,’ she said. ‘I’m terrified out of my wits. I haven’t slept a wink. If you’d seen the way that man looked at me at the funeral.’

‘Donal?’

She nodded. ‘He knows that I know. And him and Dolores have been questioned. Anyway, they haven’t charged him with anything.’

‘Not yet. But they’ll have their suspicions about him already. They’ll know from the post-mortem that she was pregnant – that won’t be news to them.’

‘But what if . . . what if I make a statement and it comes to nothing and all the while I have to live in the same town as him and his wife and his children, and his holier-than-thou parents? Or what if there’s a trial and I have to get up in front of people and testify against him and he gets off? What happens then? I’ll forever know that he killed Colette and he’ll forever know that I know, and every day I wake there’s a chance I’m going to run into him.’

‘But you don’t have a choice, Izzy. I know you’ve come looking for me to tell you the right thing to do. Did you really think I was going to tell you to go home and keep your mouth shut?’

‘I came to you looking for some kind of certainty.’

‘But what more certainty can I offer you than telling you going to the Guards is one hundred per cent the correct way to proceed – it’s what God would want, it’s what I want, it’s what anyone in their right mind would advise you to do.’

‘No. I don’t mean that kind of certainty. I mean proof. Do you know anything?’

‘What do you mean do I know anything? I left the town weeks ago.’

‘But before that – if anyone would hear something it would be you.’

‘If I’m guessing correctly, you’re asking me if I heard something in the confessional, and you know that anything I’m told during confession is completely—’

‘OK, OK, I don’t need you to say anything, I don’t need you to give me details, but I suppose what I need is some certainty that I’m not going mad, that I haven’t made all of this up in my head.’ She looked at him. ‘Maybe I’m not the only person who knew they were having an affair? Maybe Dolores knew as well?’

He met her gaze and gave a long, slow nod.

She sat forward in the chair and lifted her handbag from the floor. The action felt so sudden and decisive, but for a while she just sat there allowing her eyes to light on various objects in the room, running the leather strap of the handbag through her fingers. She looked down at her watch and then covered the face with her hand.

‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘If I leave now, I’ll be just in time to collect Niall from school.’

‘You’ll be OK, Izzy,’ he said.

She rose from her seat and let out a long exhalation. ‘Have you nothing more for me than that? Some bit of catechism, or a psalm or a quote or something that’ll inspire me and send me on my way full of gusto.’ She threw out her hand, fingers splayed, like she was delivering this speech on a stage. She looked at him from the corner of her eye, and while he did not look entirely convinced by the performance, there was something in his half-smile, some residue of fondness that reminded her of the way he used to look at her.

‘I’ll pray for you,’ he said, and they both smiled.

‘Oh, you’re full of old shit, you lot,’ she said.

He followed her out to her car and as she was unlocking the door, he said, ‘I missed you, is what I was trying to say, earlier, when I was going on at you like a demon.’

She stopped and looked across the lawn, to where two beds had been cleared, the weeds and uprooted shrubs still strewn across the grass. ‘I hope you’re not planting anything this early,’ she said. ‘We haven’t even had the last frosts yet.’

He bowed his head.

‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘it could be May before you could even chance putting something in the ground.’

A rush of wind heaved through the trees. The branches swayed and creaked, and she had the sense of being sheltered there with him. She sat in the car and waited until he had gone back into the house before she started the engine.

Chapter 26

Dolores was dredged to the surface of a fitful sleep. She blinked at the sunlight beaming through the slit in the curtains. Madeleine, Jessica, Eric – Madeleine was at school, Jessica at nursery, and Eric asleep in his cot. It was her habit now, throughout the day and when she woke in the night, to account for each of her children in this way. Not until she’d fixed them in her mind could she take another breath.

She sat up and swung her legs out of the bed, slid her feet into her slippers. A sliver of the cottage appeared through the curtains, just a flash of scorched brick, and she turned her head away. She rose from the bed, smoothed the covers. Donal’s jeans were still thrown across the end of the bed. He’d put on a shirt and tie that morning and had driven her car to visit a solicitor in Sligo, where he’d be less likely to see anyone he’d know. He thought it looked better, more respectable, to show up in the family car rather than his white work van, and he was all about respectability these days, her husband. He had her out the door to mass on a Sunday even though she was hardly fit to stand. He was friendly with everyone he met, all firm handshakes and nervous laughter. He was even being polite to her parents. She’d never seen him so ingratiating.

It was only at home that he was low and fearful – angry and silent. He barked at the kids, snarled at her, and then became soft, anxious, his need for her pitiable. But two weeks had passed since the fire and not another question had been asked of them. Even his trip to the solicitor was just to be on the safe side, he’d said – to ask a few questions about his situation. And while things would never be the same, it seemed possible they might one day at least resemble the life they’d had before.

She folded Donal’s jeans, turned out his pockets, as was her habit – to go over every stitch of clothing he owned for a stray strand of hair or a whiff of perfume. And sometimes this evidence was there, but never once had she found anything more substantial; no pair of knickers stuffed away or a receipt for dinner. But she guessed Donal wasn’t really the kind for taking his lovers out for romantic meals. In the wake of the fire her searches had become more thorough. She’d unlocked the shed, picked through his toolboxes; had to slather her hands in butter after to get rid of the oil and grease. She had prowled the house in his absence, combed every inch of it. The only thing of interest she’d found was a box of condoms hidden under the bathroom sink that he’d bought in the North and never had the good sense to use. What more proof she needed she didn’t know, and she couldn’t say exactly what she was looking for. Something she could confront him with, or something she could keep to herself until the time when she might need it.