Her letters to him were extraordinary displays of trust and tenderness and enchantment. On the table in her small room at the top of the theatre, a bottle of wine opened, a record playing, and the company cat moving about her shins, she wrote effortlessly. She wrote of her day-to-day work, with marvellously destructive set pieces on the new plays that had come to town. On people who might get in her way. Her bitchiness would turn to quirky humour. She’d tell stories of her life. She would grow strident and acrimonious about the false world to which she was contributing. She’d blame him for deserting her. For leaving her stranded.

Then the words would grow laconic and lovely.

He’d stand reading her letter in a shelter off the pier at Killalla and feel blessed.

Catherine bought copies of theatre magazines and searched through them to find roles for women in plays in the Republic.

She applied to the Druid theatre in Galway. She had a copy of the Western People sent to her from Mayo, she had a copy of the Sligo Champion delivered, and in her room she would read through reports of law trials in Castlebar and Grange, sheep markets in Erris, visitations to Knock shrine, fair days in Belmullet, goat fairs in Foxford, and then lie down with a copy of a new script about life in Belfast, which she could not bring herself to read.

She’d wonder was it possible that she could live that sort of a life, out there on Mullet. She read of the neighbours arguing over land, sales in Penney’s, céilí music in Tubbercurry, prayers for the dead, set-dancing workshops; and she thought: where do I fit into all of this? It was not only that all this had happened a long time ago in another dimension, that it was rural and unsophisticated. Not even that it was Catholic, with pages of newspapers given over to novenas and mindless prayers.

It was foreign, and at peace.

That was what alienated her most of all. And yet she persevered. The replies came. The Druid theatre had no room in its permanent company. The Hawkswell had no company at all. RTE’s drama department was not taking on new actors. A number of replies came from various agencies. Then to her disbelief she was offered a part in an advertisement for lager. A note arrived asking her to attend a photo session. A few weeks later she found herself dressed as a cowgirl in a shack out in the Glens of Antrim. A pint of lager arrived on a tray held by a man on horseback. With the cheque for a thousand pounds she bought herself a dress, packed all she could carry into the Lada and left Belfast.

I thought I could never do this, she was saying to herself over and over, as she drove South. In Fermanagh she stopped off to see her mother.