‘Dolores, I’ll treat you like you’re one of my own.’

She heard the noise of an engine coming up the drive, saw Donal’s van through the frosted panels on the door.

‘Dolores?’

‘There’s Donal back now,’ she said. ‘Call my father. I’ll be down in half an hour.’

She heard Sergeant Farrelly say something as she hung up.

She crossed the hallway, placed herself on the sofa. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, so swollen she could see the ripple of life moving beneath her top. She looked up at him as he walked in.

‘We had a call when you were out,’ she said.

He stopped and stood at the centre of the room. ‘Who?’

‘Sergeant Farrelly,’ she said. ‘He wants us to come into the station in the morning to answer a few more questions.’

‘Fuck,’ he said, dropping down on the opposite end of the sofa. He placed his elbows on his knees, made a steeple with his fingers.

‘He said there’s an investigation, which means they must know something.’

‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ he said, jouncing his elbows with his knees.

‘Donal?’

He was staring at the floor in front of him, his palms placed together now and pressed to his lips.

‘Donal – she was pregnant, wasn’t she?’

He turned his head slowly to look at her and the face she was presented with was almost unrecognisable. His features were raw with terror, his eyes bloodshot with the sting of tears.

‘That was why you . . . why you wanted her out of the cottage,’ she said.

He was pushing back his cuticles with his thumb. He drew sharp, seething breaths through his clenched teeth. ‘She threatened me,’ he said. ‘She wanted money, and she said that if I didn’t give it to her, she’d tell everyone the child was mine. But that child could have been anyone’s. And that’s what we’ll say, if they ask, we’ll tell them about that fella you saw going up there. He was a lover of hers. A fellow from Dublin. He was obsessed with her, stalking her, writing her love letters the whole time. You could describe him if they asked you to, couldn’t you?’

She was silent. She watched him turn his eyes on her then, and as though registering her doubt, her fear, he said, ‘I did this for us. I was scared for you, for the kids. She was acting so mad I didn’t know what she might do. I panicked. She was blackmailing us. Did you want her to have that child, to go parading it around, to have that kind of hold on us for the rest of our lives?’ He was shaking, snivelling noises squirming out of him. ‘She didn’t suffer,’ he said.

She rose slowly and the child moved inside her and she had to brace herself against the unsteadiness that washed over her.

‘You’re right about one thing,’ she said. ‘You keep saying it. We need to show a united front. I need to pull myself together, start showing my face.’

‘That’s it,’ he said, and the look he offered her was blissful with relief.

‘I can’t stay hiding in the house. I’ll drive into the town and collect Jessica from nursery, then I’ll drive to my mammy’s and collect Eric afterwards.’

‘Why don’t I take the van and collect Eric,’ he said.

‘Sure, that doesn’t make sense, making two trips. And anyway, I phoned Mammy earlier and told her I’d be down around three – they’ll be expecting me.’

He nodded, absently. ‘But you won’t be long?’

‘I’ll be back as soon I can,’ she said. ‘Can you get me Jessica’s wee coat? The pink one. I forgot to put it on her this morning and it’s going to rain.’

‘Where is it?’

She paused. ‘It’s hanging by the back door.’

Donal walked in the direction of the kitchen and she took the car keys from the drawer in the hall, opened the cupboard under the stairs, and lifted out her weekend case.

‘I can’t find it,’ Donal shouted.

‘Try in their bedroom,’ she called.

She moved quickly out the door and put the bag in the boot of the car, closing the lid gently.

When Donal came out of the house, she was standing at the driver’s side watching him approach, the tiny pink coat bunched in his fist. She took it from him and sat in the driver’s seat. He tapped on the window and she rolled it down a few inches.

‘Dolores,’ he said. He was bent over, his hands placed on his knees so his face was level with hers. He was out of breath suddenly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Her eyes scanned his face. ‘What for, Donal? What are you sorry for?’

And then it was as though he had to search the farthest reaches of his mind to come up with an answer to that, and failed. She rolled up the window.

He stepped aside and she was confronted by the sight of the cottage, looming over her on the hill. Like a featureless face – the roof, the windows, the door – anything that had once identified it, erased. She started the engine. As the last of the daylight bled away, the blackened ruin of the cottage faded into the sky. In the rearview mirror, she couldn’t stop herself from taking one final look at her home, where Donal stood on the doorstep, watching.

Chapter 29

Izzy approached the display table near the back wall of the café. She reached for the books in her handbag, but it didn’t look like any had sold since the last time she’d checked. She looked around for a member of staff and saw a young waitress taping a poster to the wall. Izzy thought about mentioning the conditions of the lease. The premises had to be handed back in the state it was found in, allowing for reasonable wear and tear. But she didn’t have the heart to say anything. The place had lain empty for most of the summer and she was just glad to have a bit of money coming in for it at last.

Towards the end of July she’d received a phone call from Ronan Crowley. The week before her death, Colette had sent a few new poems to her publisher. Solace: Poems 1994–1995 – a slim volume, there was to be a small number printed, more to commemorate his mother’s life than anything else, Ronan had explained. But he’d asked if she’d be willing to help him organise some kind of launch, if she could rally the other members of the creative writing group. She’d suggested holding the event at the café. And so one evening in the last week of August a small crowd had raised a glass to Colette’s life and work. Shaun and Ann, and Colette’s three sons, had lined up at one side of the room, like they were waiting for a procession to pass by and pay their respects. The creative writing group had gathered around the drinks table. And as Izzy had expected, Eithne complained about the heat, Fionnuala complained more generally, Thomas bored them with anecdotes about Colette’s life, and Helen cried. The whole thing had felt so paltry.

For the briefest of moments, Izzy had considered inviting Dolores Mullen. She’d seen Dolores several times over the summer, pushing her newborn baby around in a pram. She was seldom alone, usually accompanied by one of her sisters or her mother. And she’d wanted to go up to her and tell her that she understood, that no one blamed her for a thing that had happened. But she wasn’t sure that was true, and she reassured herself with the knowledge that Dolores had her children, the support of her family – she would be OK. And Dolores had enough to contend with. In the not-too-distant future a hearing would take place where Donal would be sentenced, and the only possible outcome for a man who’d killed a pregnant woman was life imprisonment. She would raise her children alone, and her husband would spend the next thirty years in jail, where she had helped put him. And Izzy struggled with that idea, of what ‘life’ meant, when in thirty years’ time Donal could be back in the town enjoying his retirement.

Izzy’s attempts to engage with Carl and Barry during the evening had met with reticence, like they were suspicious of her sudden significance to their lives. And she didn’t blame them. But Ronan was a grown man, solid and serious like his father. He’d asked her if she’d mind holding on to a box of the books. The café had agreed to keep a small table where the books could be purchased and he asked Izzy to keep an eye on it from time to time. And every week since, Izzy had visited the café, tending to it like an altar.

But today the table looked a mess, she thought, and she’d told the staff several times that the books should not be fanned out in this way but piled one on top of the other so that people could actually see the cover. Izzy gathered them together and placed them in two neat piles.

Passing the waitress on the way out the door, she said, ‘You’ll mind those walls – we spent a fortune having the place done up.’

Outside, the street was lined with signs for the divorce referendum, every telephone pole and lamppost swathed in them. ‘Hello Divorce . . . Bye Bye Daddy!’ one of them read and she thought that a good laugh. Her children hardly saw their father. James spent most of his time in Dublin supporting his party’s campaign to ensure divorce was legalised. And every time she watched the news or turned on the radio there was some discussion of the subject, but in day-to-day life people skirted around the issue, giving little indication of what their real feelings were. And she had thought a great deal about what all of this would have meant for Colette. She knew how Colette would have voted, or thought she did. An educated woman like her – she could have headed back to Dublin, gotten a job teaching, and remarried if she’d wanted to. But for a middle-aged woman who’d left school at sixteen and known little else but married life in Ardglas, where the scope of her life was so small – what material difference would any of this really make for her?

She lowered her head and kept it down. A few drops of rain began to fall. She hurried along the main street towards the Harbour View, and was about to cross to where her car was parked on the Shore Road. She looked left and she looked right and then she looked left again because something had caught her eye – a young fellow in a St Joseph’s uniform barrelling down the street. He had a head of thick dark hair that hung down over his eyes. She waited until he came into focus.

‘Barry Crowley!’ Izzy said, as the boy got closer, but he ignored her and walked straight past.

‘Come back here, Barry Crowley, ya scut. I know you heard me.’

He stopped but did not turn around to face her.