Molly had visited the Molly Malone statue in Dublin when she first arrived in Ireland, the only touristy thing she did, though Bobby her wife loved touristy things. But Molly went along for Ms Malone, her namesake, had that song her mother would sing to her when she was a little pissed. She was unimpressed with the statue, and as she looked down on her large cold breasts and watched her push her cart, make a living, she couldn’t help but wonder why Molly Malone was left out to the mob, day and night, why we could all ogle her fine cleavage from an open-top bus ride, why a nation had chosen to demean a woman like this? But did it worry her? No. Molly Zane considered a lot while worrying about very little.

‘When I think about how the world just turns,’ she said, jabbing my arm with a needle, ‘and holds on, ya naw, I get very overwhelmed, darl. But I don’t worry, waste of time.’

The yellow sun shone for everybody, and this, it seemed, pleased Molly Zane. Homes stayed standing, the moon did things to the tides, babies left on doorsteps were taken in and given out again, planes stayed in the air. And when you lay on the ground on a summer’s day, it looked after you, held you in its earth hug as it gently turned. For the past twenty-seven years, Molly Zane’s head had not risen above thirty-seven degrees.

‘I always loved travelling,’ Margaret Rose said.

‘Rilly? Whereabouts, hun?’

‘Ah, only England, few trips, yeah mostly England, lived behind Wembley far a few years, loved it, a big gang of us would head off to Horse Shows up narth, lots of family and always business to be done up … ya knows the ways?’ She nodded at her Nokia, and back at us. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement of fact, we all returned nods in her direction, though in truth, none of us knew the way of Margaret Rose’s business.

The day Molly said yes to travel with Bobby, was the first day she scalped a cadaver.

‘Scientists,’ she said, ‘harvest cells from the scalps and brains of cadavers.’

Margaret Rose grew pale.

‘Once I watched my anatomy teacher slice the forehead skin of a cadaver and peel it back. Eventually the brain was opened like an avocado sliced. Popular now, avocados,’ she said. ‘Miss the ones from home.’

I distracted myself.

What if

I didn’t eat sugar for a year?

What if

all I really needed was air?

What if

there is a cure?

What if

I have wasted too much time?

What if

I could slow this down? Shit.

What if my children thought I had just disappeared, run off with another man, and I arranged someone to send them something every year for their birthday and Christmas, and though they hated me for running off, they never knew of my death? What if this were easier? For them.