My husband would never have given her away, even to me. There’s no one who doesn’t make a mistake at some point or another, he often said to the children. I never agreed or disagreed, too busy agitating the shadows. No, he would never dob her in, his Saint Lizzie of the Polished Nails.

That’s all the postcard said: Mary, I may call that way at some point. John. In the end Serena calls. She’s heard from Dada and he does want to look over the farm. He’s not sure what the future holds for him. He’s really loved being away in Australia; Marius and Eugene and him did a bit of travelling, camping out and such. Her Uncle Mick joined them at some stage but he didn’t take to the auld camping; he’s a vet who doesn’t like bugs and prefers the air-conditioned comforts of his surgery and home.

The bugs there are huge and the spiders are monstrous, Dada told her, enough to make a grown man run for cover. Imagine Dada being afraid of something! she roars. It’s too preposterous. Seems Mick has a very nice man living in his house, not that he verified anything. I’m glad he has someone to keep his night terrors away, someone to hold him.

Australia also has something called Blue Sky Syndrome which sounds bloody awful! What good is a pure blue sky to anyone? Why is half of Ireland’s youth there getting bitten and burnt when we have a perfectly good country here which is practically empty? And no bombs, bullets or ballots flying? Sometimes it seems we were all just fighting to clear the blockades on the road to the airport. Anyway, Dada is now considering his options, one of those options being to put me out on the street when he comes to view his farm. She doesn’t say this last part but I hear it anyway.

–  What are you going to do, Ma?

–  About what?

–  About him!

–  What about him?

–  He’s coming home, Ma, he’s going to be landing on the street any day now, you’d better have something to say for yourself!

John and me hadn’t spoken for three hundred and seventy-three days now and counting. I had no clue what was in his mind or his heart. I needed Lizzie Magee to stop hoovering up the local wildlife in Africa and to get her ass back to Carncloon right away, we needed a pow-wow! We needed to compare notes, we needed to come up with a plan, we needed to make sure we got it right this time. I didn’t know where to start without her. The clock was ticking. No matter how hard I pushed it down, the hope that he wouldn’t hate me outright rose up in my breast, the eternal flame to my sacred heart.

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