They agreed to go the following morning to the hospital to see the patient. Hughie said he’d come in a taxi and they’d share the cost, but Birdie insisted she’d pay the entire bill. Then he left.

‘Mind yourself on the avenue,’ says she when he was on the doorstep. ‘There’s no light down there.’

And that was the beginning of it. Eight weeks ago. Whoosh.

4

IT WAS ABOUT TWO WEEKS after the accident when Louise appeared. Gussie was still in the hospital on the machine. She came to the door with a bunch of flowers, and broke down in tears, as if she had been Gussie’s wife or something.

Birdie examined her face for wrinkles or touches of salt in the hair, and Louise wiped her eyes and then tried to be cheerful and make up things about Montana, and she went through a litany of what her brothers and sisters did and where they lived, and how many children they all had, and the cost of bungalows in Galway. She said she didn’t really know him that well.

‘Of course you didn’t,’ says Birdie. ‘The pair of ye were just kids.’

And then Louise told her about the letter and Charlie and all that. And Birdie said she had something upstairs. She went edging her way out the door and up the stairs, one at a time and Louise could hear her in the bedroom above, fumbling about, hitting the wardrobe, dropping her walking stick, and eventually the same slow procedure in reverse, until Birdie was again at the foot of the stairs, and out of breath. Her lips were blue. In her hand she had the unopened letter.

‘I couldn’t read it to him,’ she said. ‘I can’t even go and look at him.’

Louise fixed all that. At the foot of the stairs.

‘Will you bring me in?’ says Birdie.

Louise said of course she would. So Louise came the following day again, and this time with Hughie and Tommy Smith.

‘Don’t we all have troubles, Mrs Delaney?’ says Tommy. ‘It comes to everyone’s door but I’m here, Mrs Delaney. I’m here. Day or night now. I want you to understand that. Day or night.’

Well, that was a big step, wasn’t it? And, after that, Louise and Hughie became her constant companions. Her support and staff. And that was a great help. She cried her way from the door of the hospital all the way to his bed. Birdie was no joke when it came to tears. When the floodgates opened.

Down the long corridor, through the Medical and Surgical units, crying deeper and with greater disturbance the closer she got. Sometimes it would subside and then her eye would light on a trolley or a respirator or an incubator, and those mechanical objects had a powerful effect on her. Away she’d go again into the floods.

Hughie and Louise flanked her. Even Tommy took up the rear. He couldn’t resist it. And the procession drew the attention of doctors and nurses and other visitors on their way to see relatives and friends in the wards. A procession of sorrow. That’s what it was. And eventually Birdie’s dry, blotting-paper face, crowned with a tiny feathery hat, could make no more tears, could construct no more expressions. Not even glances of comprehension.