“I did,” said Catherine and she laughed.

When they came down stairs, Sara filled the fridge with parcels of food she’d brought.

“You look terrible,” said Sara. “Where’s your friend?”

“He’s out at sea.”

“Did you go to see a doctor?”

“No.”

“You could have blinded yourself.”

“I’m fine, Sara, it looked worse a few days ago.”

Sara had bloomed, and yet she had become strangely diffident. Only in short rushes would she speak, and deliberately avoided all conversation about her recent fame. Her voice when she did speak had taken on a new fluent actorly inflexion.

“Let’s go out for a walk.”

“I can’t.”

“Tie a scarf over your forehead,” Sara said. “It reminds me of the time you went bald.”

Everywhere they went on Mullet people would stop and gather and stare at Sara.

“Are you Bridie from Glenroe?” people asked, and when she said she was they were astounded to find her there, walking a beach in a remote part of the west of Ireland.

“I told you it was her,” one lady said to her husband. “He said you couldn’t be, but I said you were Bridie. Isn’t that so?”

Sheepishly, the husband nodded.

“I think you do us great credit,” said the woman. “You are the most beautiful looking woman on the television. Isn’t she?”

Again the husband nodded.

Sara signed autographs. She stepped into photographs, and herself and Catherine posed for a group of shark fishermen before a sheer fall into the sea at Eachleim.

“Imagine! Bridie Smith here,” said one local girl when they went into O’Malley’s for a drink. “Imagine that.” And she stared at Sara, and shook her head and put out a finger and touched her. “God help you, but they’re giving you a dreadful time in Glenroe,” she said and clasped her thighs, and delighted by the thought of how fiction removes the pain, she shook with laughter and said: “But you’re well fit for them.”

“So you missed a part in a film, did you?” said Sara, who had her hair cut in a severe parting. She rested her elbow on a wooden ledge to the right of Catherine’s arm.

“Yes.”

She looked into Sara’s eyes seeking there some sympathy, but all she found was ironic detachment.

“You should leave him.”

“As a matter of fact I respect what he’s doing.”

“Oh you do, do you?”

A pale streak of light cut across Sara’s cheeks. Her eyes were self-absorbed, and full of feminine contempt, except when periodically they reflected the glitter of the overhead lights. With a new and childish widening of the pupil, Sara delicately looked round the crowded lounge.

“You could have been more discreet,” she whispered in a tantalizing way.

“I really didn’t want to be disloyal to him.”

“None of us do, Cathy.”