I turned back to the dark kitchen and walked dry-eyed to the yellow range. The terrible palpable silence and distance that was always between me and him in the heart of the house settled itself in the concrete corners of the room. He’d know, of course, that Joe Loughrey had reappeared. I felt him move to stand behind me. An inch away at most – not touching me but still somehow inside me. It took all my strength not to sink against him and let him take me down and down to our meeting place. He was right, some nights I couldn’t be more his.

He was breathing slow, I was hardly breathing at all, but both our hearts were smashing at their ribcages. After minutes he moved away and out into the hall. He closed the glass door into the back scullery gently behind him and I turned around in time to see his big shape picked out in glass flowers before he stepped into the orchard.

30

I climbed the hill the next day to meet my first three boys from the bus, leaving Daniel to sleep. John Johns was away early again to Omagh but he wouldn’t be too late as he couldn’t wait to see them either. All four of them would be at home – all of them together! – and my chest swelled at the thought of all the noise and bother that I would yearn to endure for another twenty years.

Marius and Eugene were coming back from Leeds after a week’s trip to see Serena in London, Shane was meeting them in Belfast. They had stayed with a pal in Derry overnight and they would take the same workers’ bus together that I had to the end of the Hill Road.

I stopped for a while at the turn in the lane, looking down at Johns Farm: the red tin roofs still on the big white barns; the river field full of buttercups; the prize Charolais grazing; Serena’s old pony, Bantree, standing stock-still. All of it framed in the greenest of green. John wouldn’t sell the little pony, although he cost a small fortune in vet’s fees and feed. Bantree was safe and sound and waiting for her anytime, his girl.