Sal was not at all worried that he was caught out on Slieve Bo. She was well used to his capers and disappearances. Often, Doctor Sot was gone for days at a time. Many was the ditch of the north-west he had woken up in. Once he woke beneath an upturned rowing boat on the shore of Lough Gill – one leg of his trousers had been entirely wet, the other entirely dry. He had never quite pieced that one together. Tonight’s accommodation wasn’t bad at all. He was shown into one of the rusted caravans. The travellers turned out to be early-to-bed types: the boredom. By nine, there were no lights at all but those dim cold ones hung in the sky above. Bald children and alien dogs stretched around the caravan with him and they all slept sweetly. Doctor Sot could not settle, but sat. He drew on a naggin and looked out to the camp. The chocolate cake, uneaten, was on his lap in its white box. His eyes adjusted to the dim, eerie glow of the starlight as it made shapes inside the caravan – the prone figures of the kids and the dogs, breathing. Sot stood then and he approached bravely a mirror mounted on the door of a cupboard. He crept up on it, carefully, and found that it was clear – no malevolence – and he backed away. He crept up on it again and still it was clear – no malevolence – he backed away. He crept up a third time and a figure appeared in the mirror but there was no malevolence – it was his young woman, outside. She looked in at him. She made not a move, but smiled. He climbed down from the caravan and went to her. The serenity in her smile, it was confirmed at once, was that of a psychotic.

‘Ya wanna see my bender?’ she said.

‘I’d love to, Mag,’ said Doctor Sot.

‘Knows my name ’n’ all,’ she said.

The bender was on the one side a length of tarp stretched over a run of willow branches staked in the ground. The other side was walled by the shale outcrop and on this Mag had sketched drawings of great wingéd creatures and a series of mathematical equations.

‘Soon’s I get ’em right,’ she said, ‘I paints over an’ I start again.’

‘You’re bringing forward knowledge each time, Mag,’ he consoled.

The bender was warmed by a tiny pot-belly stove, its flue extended through a hole in the tarp. The bender was lit barely by a battery lamp and it had pallets for flooring.

‘Ya wan’ yer pallets down,’ she said. ‘With yer pallets down, the damp it don’t get up.’

‘The way to go, Mag, unquestionably. We don’t want the damp getting up.’

‘Thing is,’ she said. ‘Soon’s ya get yer pallets down, get yer rats run under, dontcha? So what I’ve done?’