“I might have some changes.”

“Send them on then as soon as you can,” he said, reluctantly.

“I’ll give them to Catherine.”

“Catherine?”

“Yes, Catherine,” said Jack sharply. There was a long tantalizing silence. “She’s coming down today,”

“Is she?” Eddie replied with a disconcerting change of tone. “I didn’t know.”

“That’s the way. Good luck,” Jack said in an empty voice, and for fear of hearing anything that might destroy the illusion of happiness, he replaced the phone and stepped out quickly onto the street to greet a Lada which was not hers.

He hitched out to Corrloch for she might have got home without him seeing her on the road, but she was not there. He relit the fires in the Adams’ house and began sweeping out the rooms again. In the kitchen the hot water cylinder creaked wildly. He sat sober and correct at the kitchen table.

“It’s all right,” someone told him once, “when the loved one enters the subconscious. That’s fine. Let them stay there. It’s when they are alive and kicking in your every thought, that’s when it means trouble.”

He tried to put her by but she would not have it. She was as stubborn in his recreation of her as she was in real life. In her absence he felt her physical presence even more profoundly than the moment when she would actually be there in front of him. Everywhere he went he caught hints of her imminent return. He saw her expression in certain women as they approached him from a distance. Overheard her laugh on a street.

He rushed forward towards each disappointment with manic haste. His panic increased the more his expectations were confounded. This was always the way it was.

He lay on her bed and looked at the ceiling. There was a sour indoor smell of vegetables on the turn. He searched the house for the source of the smell but couldn’t find it. Presently he realized he was longing for a drink.

He walked the few miles through the falling dark to Belmullet and stood at the bridge. He ordered a coffee and sat in the sun lounge of the Erris Hotel. It looked out on the street where Catherine would arrive. A country couple and a brightly dressed, middle-aged American in check trousers entered. The countryman, who was wearing a baseball cap, disengaged himself from the others and sat down by Jack.

“You have any Yanks in your family?” he asked.

“No,” replied Jack.

“That’s a brother of mine gone in.” He nodded towards the bar.

“I see.”

“Are you staying here?”

“No.”

“You must have a girl,” he said after a while.

“I do,” Jack smiled.

“Well, then, she must be very beautiful,” the man nodded sagely. “I live up the pass with my sister. That’s her gone in with him. He’s just in for the Christmas holidays, God bless us. We’re going out for a bite tonight, but I’ll sit here with you.”