No pots. No fuss.

But she has just done it when she immediately forgets it. Doesn’t know where the bowl is. Can’t remember where she put it two seconds ago. She wants to scream at someone. Where’s my porridge? She searches for a pot.

But nothing to be found. They’re all clean. Where’s the porridge?

And a moment later she finds it again. She’s been making it in the microwave for years. It had just slipped her mind for a second. But that’s the way her mind works now. There are little gaps. Where nothing exists. And nothing, not even the names in her own little prayer book can be recalled. Until the tide comes in again, and the electricity goes back on, and she is able to continue with her breakfast, even though it’s three o’clock in the morning.

The Oxo box is on the kitchen table. How did it get there? Perhaps there is something important in it. She wouldn’t have come downstairs for no reason. No.

She takes it in her arms and sits down and places it on her knees, and she thinks one sudden thought. A cup of tea. That’s a good idea. Make a cup of tea.

5

NO ONE COULD DENY that Birdie kept a clean house. She always did. Warm and full of food. The Vet ached with happiness when he crossed the threshold. Birdie was always making dumplings for her little bunny, as she called Gussie, because when he was frightened, his big brown eyes opened very wide and he became still and he reminded her of a rabbit caught in the headlamps of the Vet’s Austin. And Gussie often slept with her. Snuggling into her back for warmth when he had a nightmare. He clung to her on the back of the bike as she pedalled into town to do battle with the spinsters of Ballinasloe.

He is still clinging to her. Even in the kitchen, at this time of night. Even though he’s dead. In his coffin. Even though he is as cold as a stone in the ditch. Even though all is quiet in the sanctuary of the church at this very moment. He still stares down at her from his graduation photograph on the kitchen wall. The black gown around his shoulders, and the scroll of paper resting in his hands. His eyes wide with achievement and pride.

He was always clinging to her. Even when she wasn’t in the house, he’d sit in the wardrobe and play with her shoes and sniff at her frocks. And he’d make tiny bouquets for her from the flowers in the front garden and he’d leave them on the hall table until he saw her shadow in the glass of the front door and then he’d rush to her with his whole heart.

When she became pregnant with him, everyone agreed she had a lot of courage to face childbirth at her age. She would have said she hadn’t a lot of choice in the matter. Courage didn’t come into it. But sure enough her blood pressure jumped through the roof the day she went into hospital for the tests. Nobody could explain the chart, so they sent her to Galway in an ambulance. The siren gave her a headache.