– What time is it? – inquires the woman in white. Snow-white in lace frills. Lovely Louise, and larger than ever.

– I was behind the curtain there for years, – says she.

What were you doing there?

– I was looking for a top; an old-fashioned calico print. Isn’t that funny? And do you know, Gussie was with me and we were in this girls’ shop, and I was in and out of the curtained corner with jumpers and jackets and dresses that tightened in here, at the bustline, and be jeepers, Birdie, do you know what I’m going to tell you, but that son of yours, that ladeen what’s now stretched out in his fine oak coffin, his hands were shaking as he fingered all the pretty lace things on the rack. Now for ye! And how long ago is that, would you say? –

Fifteen years, Birdie said. Fifteen years.

– Jeepers Birdie, ’tis only like yesterday. –

Fifteen years.

– Chríost Rí, is it that long? But sure I’m back for the funeral. Amn’t I?

– Do you know what I got in the end, Birdie? I got a cream dress with a high neck and an orange mohair shawl. What do you think of that?

– And it was me started him on muesli, Birdie. Did ye not know that? Oh aye. On account of the bowels. And on fruit and yogurt. I thought it would help. Though he claimed it was bad for the health. Too much is as bad as too little he’d say. Rubbish says I, Birdie. Rubbish.

– By the way, what’s the music? –

That’s Mr Devine, says Birdie. He’s up the chimney with his organ.

– Glorious music, Birdie. Glorious!

– I was his Madonna. You know that, Birdie? I took him from the bath gown he was folded in, like a child, and I made him new and sparkling. Smelling of almonds. –

How did you do it? Birdie heard herself ask.

– The secrets of me fingers, – says the ghost. – Bringing him across the landscape of his own body for the first time. Showing him continents he had only heard rumours of. Taking his body and making it mine. Isn’t that the riddle now, Birdie? –

Are you alive or dead? Birdie heard herself say, though she said nothing. The beautiful ghost stretched herself across the bed at Birdie’s feet.

– Well now, you figure that out, girleen. You figure it out for yourself. –

Tell me the colour of his eyes. If you’re Louise, you must know him. You must know the colour in his eyes. Please tell me. Please.

– Oh I knew him all right to be sure to be sure. Looka now. Wan night he sat up on the mattress in me flat in the Claddagh and I daubed lipstick on his mouth and did his eyebrows with heavy black pencil. He looked like a garish puppet behind the glass in the arcade down at Salthill. And then I threw off me green silk slip and I flung it at him and says I, if you can’t be a man be a woman. Do ye want to hear more, Birdie? Do ye? –