‘Ah, here, no, no, stop this … this really is not necessary. You can hardly do it yourself,’ Claire said, insisting, and linked her father while he attempted to sit back on the bed.

‘But there’s really no reason for him to be so, so … well … lame. Or bradycardic.’ Ted Baker was most puzzled.

And they went out to check again. They would check, and maybe if Claire would step out with them, until they checked.

As Hegs began to lie back down, Margaret Rose offered him reversing advice. ‘Nather bit, bit more, good … yar on the pillow naw, good man.’

He thanked her.

Alex squeezed my hand. ‘Here, I’m going to head out for a little while, just to check your mother is OK, and give the kids clothes, settle them.’

‘Yeah, yeah, of course,’ I said, and waved my free arm over the nightstand contents. ‘Will you take some of this?’

He grabbed a kidney dish and some plastic cups. ‘I am so sorry,’ I said. I toyed with the idea of telling him I didn’t exactly tell Google I was dying, like he accused me, I more hinted at it, but I resisted.

‘I know you are,’ he said, rushing about, frantic to get out the door. ‘I really need to get out of here though,’ he said and kissed me hard.

‘Albumen, the egg, the white,’ he said as he walked out.

I tossed and turned for some time and eventually lifted Shane’s thin laptop in my hands. Whirr. It was fully charged. Odd. On the home screen I could make out a bird, a long-legged goofy thing with black feathers, slick with a white stripe. I remembered seeing one like it before in a swampy field on the way from Orlando to Siesta Key on a trip some years back. We had headed for the coast to get away from the tacky theme parks. I’d bought some villas in Kissimmee the night before to market at home and rent out to Irish families. Alex had stayed in with the kids, watched some films. We hit the road early, despite the fact that I’d had a very late night. I hadn’t slept at all. I’d crept in at around six a.m., after closing a deal in the Red Lobster with the builder, and we’d gone on to a party. He was from East Clare. That morning, after arriving home, I showered, and made pancakes for breakfast. Alex didn’t care, or didn’t seem to care about my tardiness. They ate the pancakes and we headed off.

After some time on the road, we cut off at a junction to head to a restaurant specialising in home baking, southern comfort foods. Feed the kids again. In the diner I drank iced lemon tea with gin. Through the window I was taken by the way these two birds fought, an arid dryness in my chest, these birds bickering, us silent amongst the billboards and the chains upon chains of same-food-place. Her feathers were raven black with a dirty white neck and a dipped beak. This one’s feathers were raven black with a dirty white neck too.