The only neighbours were the Kellys, who farmed the land and lived in an old cottage on the opposite side of the road. But they are long gone. The cottage down near the main road is falling apart. The garden overgrown with nettles. The windows broken. The gutters thick with weeds, and ivy creeping up the walls and around the windows. For some reason Birdie thinks it’s Sunday.

Long ago the church would be packed to the gills on a Sunday morning, and the entire population of the parish would be out on the roads. Birdie used to sit on the bed and give a running commentary to the Vet as he sucked oranges and lay in the sheets beside her. She’d tell him what car was passing on the main road. Was it going slow? Who was in it? God bless your eyesight, he’d say.

Birdie thought the new hip would make all the difference. That it would take away her nervousness. But to tell the truth, when she returned to Ballinasloe the first thing she discovered was that the television had shrunk. Well, that didn’t do her nerves any good. And then she noticed that someone had changed all the photographs on the walls. And there were sheets missing from the hot press. And the papers belonging to the house, the insurance documents, and the forms for her social welfare money were all upside down. Someone had been visiting. The invisible man was at it again. His threatening presence behind the curtain.

Birdie rushes to the statue of the Virgin, and lights a candle on the saucer, and with the intensity of a child, she sits on the edge of the bed, squeezes her hands together, and begs the Virgin not to leave her alone. To send her the angels, or the Vet, or even Mr Devine on his organ. She cries. She works her breath into a climax. And then it’s gone. It’s over.

Nothing to worry about. Just a turn. Like blood pressure. An inward convulsion as the tinker woman said. And now she wipes away her tears and goes out onto the landing to negotiate the stairs.

Down the same stairs she goes, very nifty, one at a time, easy and gentle. Smiling defiantly on each step. Each move is a victory. She feels triumphant, because this morning she is not crawling down on her bum. No, sir. She is home. And nobody or nothing will ever take her away from her home again.

She reaches the hall. The level ground. And she stands erect in her own house.

‘So,’ says she. ‘It’s time to make the dinner.’

Not that she thinks it’s the middle of the day or anything like that. Birdie is no fool. She knows what day it is. She knows how early it is. But she wants to make dinner.

That’s not a crime, is it? She finds a potato and a bowl of cabbage in the fridge. It’s been there since the week before. All she has to do is heat it in the microwave. And from the freezer box she takes a meat burger. Then she stands over the pan watching it sizzle.