Because it was much more enjoyable to go off to Dublin for the day than to spend another endless vigil at the bedside with old Donoghue and that slapper Louise, in and out gawking at her as if she was the Mother of Jesus.

The bog rolled by and the sheep rolled by and two beautiful horses in a flat green field rolled by.

Cheerful. The trolley came with tea and coffee and a variety of raisin pastries. Birdie did a thorough examination but the boy’s shirt was dirty, so she decided not to take anything, even though the little buns were all sealed up in plastic wrap. But you can’t be too careful. She would buy jelly sweets in Dublin. She would have tea and buns in Arnotts. And she could be back home again on the evening train.

A mighty river stretched into the far distance as they approached Athlone. The shoreline came right up to the window of the train. The water was blue. She thought of Gussie. Blue for a boy.

He’d been lying in the same position now for over a month. His back and legs were sweaty and she had seen where cracks had appeared on the skin along the groin, and she had seen the nurses bathing him, and putting talcum powder all over his groin as if he were a child. He was a child. He was her child. But she hadn’t powdered his body with talc for a very long time.

A big baby. That’s what he was. Stuck in a big bed with cot-sides. And he was never going to be better. Of course not. He was going the other way. No wonder she didn’t want to sit in the hospice staring at a big dumb baby. All his own fault for hitting a wall. Not looking where he was going.

In the old days she had chances. She could begin again. That was called being young, but she didn’t know it then. When you could fail today and try harder the next morning. She could bake a special tart for him in the afternoon. She could let him help roll the pastry. Knead the flour. She could sit at the television with him for the children’s programmes. She could put sweet rice in the oven for him. She could bring him into town on the back of her bicycle and get him comics and Spangles. But that was then. She could do nothing now. Not again. Not ever. He was as useless as a broken clock. And there was no point in the wide world sitting in a fucken hospice for the dying on a lovely day, punishing herself. What would she be doing that for?

And there was every reason to go to Dublin, on the train, with her free pass, and enjoy the winter sunshine and look at the shops on O’Connell Street, and remember the time she bought the lovely material in Arnotts to make the cushion covers that still look so well on the drawing-room furniture.