Phoebe Griffin stood at the big plate-glass window of the viewing deck in Dublin Airport, worrying about the weather. Thick mist, ghostly grey, pressed itself against the tall panes before her. It might have been trying to get inside, out of the cold.

When she was little, her father used to bring her here, on Sunday afternoons, to watch the aeroplanes taking off and landing. It fascinated her how the propellers made a circular silvery blur until the engines stopped and they began to slow down. Strange to think of them, in the heights of the sky, beating through the blued air, hour after hour. Such speed, such frailty. The aircraft looked so small, from up here, small and sturdy and brave.

At that time, in her childhood, she still thought Quirke was her uncle, and it would be many years before she discovered otherwise. When they came here together, to watch the planes, he would leave her alone for twenty minutes or more and return with a glossy look in his eyes and a funny smell on his breath. She remembered the moment when she realised that while he was away, he had of course been in the bar. The bar was open all day, because it was in the airport, and she was his pretext to come here and that way circumvent the Sunday licensing laws in town. She wondered how many whiskeys he managed to lower in twenty minutes. She thought of him there, furtive and urgent, lifting glass after glass and trying not to catch his own eye in the mirror behind the bar. She felt sorry for him. She supposed he thought that at the airport, with all the comings and goings, no one would know him or pay him any attention. He would be safe.

She didn’t mind that he had used her in this way. It hadn’t done her any harm, after all. Of the two of them, Quirke would have been the one in distress.

He was always kind to her, in his awkward, over-cheerful way. He bought her ice creams in summer, and chocolate bars in winter. In the wintertime there weren’t many aeroplanes – tourists didn’t come, when it was cold and wet. Sometimes, when Quirke was away at his furtive drinking, she would go down and wander around the airport by herself, looking at the people. Once, a little black girl of about her own age had smiled at her. The girl was with her parents. Phoebe had  never seen black people before.