‘Oh?’

‘It appears likely the government will call another referendum on divorce before too long. James might have mentioned something about it.’

‘He never tells me anything.’

‘Well, we’ve been asked to get out in front of it, to head it off at the pass, to deliver a stirring sermon on the sanctity of marriage that’ll terrify the wits out of anyone who has ever considered leaving their spouse.’

‘Jesus – is that what they think is going to happen? That people will be leaving their marriages in droves as soon as they legalise it?’

‘Oh, absolutely – there’ll be no one married within a year.’

‘And what do you make of the whole thing?’

‘Well – and now don’t go saying this to anyone or I’ll be shot – but I don’t think you have to be married to be a good Catholic. However, it is one of the seven sacraments, and . . . well, I think if you bother to go through with it, you should try and stick with it.’

‘And if it’s too easy to get out of, who’d bother trying?’ she said. ‘In my day the worst thing you could imagine was being unmarried – you just went with the first fellow who asked you.’

It was something he’d heard her say before.

‘Is there something you’d like to tell me about?’ he asked.

Pastoral care – that was what they called it – attending to the spiritual and emotional needs of the meek and downtrodden, and while he could never describe Izzy as such, she was the person in the parish he visited most often.

‘No,’ she said, with a little shake of her head.

‘How was the dinner-dance?’

‘I had dinner and I danced.’ She flicked some ash from her sleeve. ‘Those things are the same every year – a load of men telling each other how great they are while their wives pretend to enjoy themselves. I wouldn’t care if I never went to another one for as long as I lived.’

‘I heard James gave a great speech.’

‘Did you indeed. Same things as usual – grassroots investment, less reliance on EU funding . . . or sometimes it’s that we need more EU funding, it depends on what way the wind’s blowing.’

He smiled. ‘He must be doing something right – he’s held his seat for long enough.’

She threw her eyes to the ceiling.

‘Has he done something to upset you?’ Brian asked.

He watched her narrow her eyes at him, the curious way she looked into him like she was trying to tell if this question was a joke. She leaned towards him a little then rested back into her seat.

‘Did I ever tell you that I used to own a business, Father?’

He winced at the word ‘Father’ – she never called him that. ‘You did not. When was this?’

‘When I first got married. I had a business on the main street of the town – a flower shop. Up by where the chemist is now. The building’s been empty and up for sale for so long you probably wouldn’t notice it.’

‘I know the place you’re on about.’

‘But when I came to the town first there was no flower shop and I thought it seemed like a sensible idea for a business. As you know yourself, there’s no end to births, deaths, and marriages.’

‘It’s a thriving industry,’ he said.

‘And there was nothing really for me to do after we got married. I wanted to be pregnant straight away but it just didn’t happen and anyway—’ She dismissed this strand of the story with a wave of her hand. ‘I was bored out of my head, and not being from the town I didn’t know a lot of people and everyone I did know seemed to have a child. James was working at the co-op and he had a good enough wage but there’s always the need of more money. So I sorted out taking on the lease. I went to the bank and filled out the paperwork and paid the first three months up front. And James just sort of let me get on with it, but took no interest in it whatsoever, like maybe if he just said nothing I’d give up. He didn’t like the idea of me going out to work in case I wasn’t there to iron his shirts or cook spuds for him. And he was getting busier – more involved politically, and he was out and about at after-work meetings and that sort of thing.’ She stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray. ‘And I never made a fortune at it but what little I did make bought the site this house was built on.’

‘And what happened?’ he asked.

‘James had just been elected to the local council so there was a few extra bob coming in. He decided we didn’t need the shop anymore. I remember the morning he came up the stairs and I was lying in the bed and he lifted Orla up out of the cot and hugged her, and told me the news that he’d handed over the lease to Mark Carr like he’d done me a big favour. All I was thinking about was how quickly I could get back to work. You spend five years building a business and then someone gives it away on you just like that. Mark turned it into a gift shop, local crafts for tourists and so on. Ran the place into the ground within a year.’

‘And do you regret that?’

‘Oh, I could have fought a bit harder I suppose, but I was worn out. I’d just given birth.’

‘No, I don’t mean that – I mean . . . you stayed at home to look after your children, that’s the most important work you can do.’

She sighed. ‘I would not have been the first mother who went out to work. I was just so in love with my new daughter. I wanted her to have everything.’

‘But what you gave her was more valuable – your time and your presence and your attention. You made a full, unadulterated commitment to the role of being a mother and you didn’t—’

‘Like Colette Crowley?’

He withdrew a cigarette and pushed it back into the pack. ‘Sometimes people come to me looking for spiritual guidance and—’

‘She’d need a bit of that, all right. Was that the first time you’d met her?’

‘Yes. She’d left the parish by the time I arrived.’

‘God, she’s a good-looking woman,’ Izzy said.

There was bitterness in her tone, he thought.

‘Sometimes all people need to hear is that they’re forgiven, and that they need to forgive themselves.’

‘It’s that easy, is it? So if you leave your children and husband to go off with a married man, your penance is to read at mass – that’s a good one. I should try that myself.’

‘I do not know the particulars of what she did and did not do. Anything I know of the woman is—’

‘Oh, give me a break. It seems to me that some people are able to behave however they want and still go around like they haven’t a care in the world.’

‘Do you really believe that?’ he asked.

She slumped forward and crossed her arms on the table as though the last of her energy had left her all at once.

‘That woman lost a child,’ he said. ‘I don’t think that’s something you ever really get over.’

‘I don’t doubt that she’s suffered,’ Izzy said.

‘I think it’s a good thing she’s back. Someone artistic and musical like her is an asset to a community. From what I’ve heard she used to be involved in everything – the choral society, the drama society. And she came to me with this.’ He reached into the inside pocket of his blazer. He unfolded a piece of paper and handed it to her. ‘She wants me to put that in the parish newsletter.’