It was a short walk once I got as far as Brooky Hay but after I had tripped for the third time I knew I was coming down with something. The signs were all there: the pounding head, the scorching eyes, the chest that felt like it had a gravestone lying on top of it. I would be in bed for at least a week. The last time I had been bedridden with a fever was when Serena had left home and John Johns had slept beside me in a chair; this time I’d have to burn alone.

I don’t remember reaching home but that’s where I woke up, under the eaves. It must have been Auntie Eileen who called the doctor. She was there when I came round, with an anxious Daniel and Bernie hovering behind her. Doctor Loughrey Senior had been in attendance – dear auld Dermot – and I hadn’t even recognised him I was so doolally! I picked the plaster from the top of my hip where he’d injected the dose of antibiotic needed to get my temperature down. The little bruise was already yellow. I didn’t dwell on my other bruises.

My ankles ached, my knees, my dignity. I had never felt more ugly. I had hurt myself again. I had pulled one of my walls down and had it land squarely on my shoulders. Kathleen ‘just popped by’ that evening and she set about fussing and bothering and making batches of disgusting chicken soup. I begged her to help me into the shower so that I could scald my skin, modesty be damned.

When she was drying me off, she touched a tender spot at the back of my neck about the size of a thumb pad, but she said nothing. I had always marked easily.

There had been no further word from Belfast. My mother was ringing, despite being asked not to, but John was taking no word from Carncloon. She’d thought that the news of my illness would bring him to the phone but it had not. Having nothing to report in the bingo hall must be doing her head in.

Dermot didn’t come back to check that I was alright but I had his prescription filled. Would he ever guess that it was his darling who had helped lay me so low? I imagined myself stopping at the crest of Brooky Hay and turning back for home before any damage is done. Every time I manage to walk myself all the way, with only the dappled leaves bearing witness, John is standing at the half-door waiting for me.