Hughie stared out the window as Louise talked about her boyfriend, and he tried to study the slate roofs of the houses as if there was something interesting about them.

‘So you’ll not stay in Ireland?’ says Birdie.

‘No,’ says Louise. ‘There’s no point.’

‘No,’ says Birdie.

‘It wouldn’t make sense. I have a job out there. Hanging around Ireland hoping for a job to come up would be crazy.’

‘Madness,’ says Hughie. ‘Pure madness. When you have the job over there.’

At the graveyard Hughie held the door open for Birdie as she struggled up out of the soft leather seat, and got a grip on her walking stick.

‘You’re fortunate, Mr Donoghue,’ says she, ‘to have your health.’

‘Well, isn’t that the truth,’ says Hughie. Walking beside her all the time. Standing at the open grave beside her. Smoking a cigarette beside her when the prayers were over. His black tie flying across his shoulder in the wind, and a long streak of brown hair flapping into his eyes.

Louise and Birdie shook hands for the last time in Hayden’s Hotel that afternoon, when the dinner was over. A good sturdy dinner of roast beef and potatoes, which Birdie had made available to all the mourners.

Louise hugged her. She kissed Hughie on the cheek. And then with her rucksack on her broad back, and her yellow anorak tucked up to her chin, and her long hair tucked in under a woollen hat with all the colours of the rainbow, she walked out into the snow and down the road towards the train station. They watched for a minute as she skidded a few times crossing the street.

‘Will she be alright?’ Birdie wondered.

‘She’ll be fine,’ Hughie said.

Hughie lingered a little longer over his glass of Guinness and insisted Birdie take a brandy and port, which she did, though it never passed her lips. They talked about the dead. About dozens of people. Half the population of two cemeteries. People who died decades before. People who had stood in the same bar fifty years earlier. At Birdie’s wedding. When Hughie had played ‘The Dark-Haired Girl’ to get things going. Her favourite polka.

Not that anyone would recognize the bar now. The way it was all changed. The door was in a different place. And the wooden counter had been gutted. With all the glass and fancy silver lampshades, Birdie said it looked more like a hairdressing salon.

He laughed. And for a split second anything might have happened. Maybe it was just that they both had the same sense of humour. Or that Birdie had none, and Hughie had enough for both of them.

And maybe that’s why she confided in him on the day of her wedding, when her new husband was talking to his friend the priest, and Hughie was sitting in the corner of the lounge. His flute, idle on the tabletop beside his pint. Hughie relishing the blue smoke from the last cigarette in his packet.