‘A long time to be anywhere,’ says she, and she hadn’t been out of her little Laura Ashley house in a lifetime. Rosaries and novenas and videos of the pope to keep her tranquilized. Birdie knew the track. You don’t live as long as Birdie without learning something about human nature and the religious imperative.

‘He’s very odd,’ she said at last on the phone to Birdie. It was like a thump in the face. An accusation. A full stop. It stopped Birdie in her tracks.

‘Are ye there, Mrs Delaney? Are you still on the line? I hope I haven’t said anything to upset ye.’

‘He is odd,’ Birdie admitted. ‘He is.’ She was crying. ‘And I’m sorry.’ And she hung up.

The days shortened. The sky filled with cloud so heavy and low that it felt as if slabs of cement were pressing down on the earth. The phone didn’t ring again. No more dispatches from Connemara. And Gussie was still walking out there, and the sky was so low that it cut off the tips of the mountains. And the sea turned angry. A number of the chalets that peppered the headland were empty. And some had signs sellotaped inside the patio windows – For Rent – with phone numbers.

He wrote each one down on the back of a postcard that had stayed in his coat pocket for weeks. He had bought it in the optimism of the first few days and then couldn’t think of anyone to send it to except his mother. He knew there was no going back to school. He knew there was no going back anywhere.

The landlady was only too willing to help him secure a chalet by the beach and he moved in and began living on tins of beans and bags of potatoes. He watched the leaves fall from the trees. He spent the long winter evenings listening to the radio. News shows. Talk shows. Arts shows. Documentaries about wild birds in the sloblands of Wexford. And he rounded off each day with the warm and comforting voice of Daniel O’Donnell singing twenty-three classics from the Jim Reeves songbook on the album Welcome to My World.

Daniel O’Donnell was more than a country-and-western singer, with a haircut that said butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth. He was an artist. A seducer. He could touch the chord. He could hint at the emotion. He was understated, and he allowed all the emotions to surface in the listener. Oh Daniel did the job for Gussie! In the privacy of his own little world, Gussie could be anyone he wanted to be, and he played out any fantasy he desired, when Daniel hit the high notes. Yeah. Daniel hit the high notes!

One morning Gussie noticed ice on the roads. The cars were going by with their lights on. What’s this? he wondered. And he scrutinized the calendar and realized to his horror that Christmas was just around the corner. It certainly was. And it dawned on Gussie for the first time in his life that Christmas was an obscene and sentimental mess. The log fires and the snow on the television made everyone in the world feel lonely. Including his mother. Though this year he vowed he would not go next or near her. He vowed to avoid that long nightmare of sitting shoulder to shoulder with her in the drawing room, watching Sinatra movies and Bing Crosby movies in stony silence.