On North Main Street, I took shelter in Bradley’s doorway. I reached into my bag to check my phone. Still nothing from Davy, no contact from him since Sunday, though I had two text messages from my mother, one from Sadie and another from Alice, all asking me to call. I’d leave them till morning. Without thinking too much about it, I texted Davy, one word: ‘Sorry’.

Aimlessly, I went into Bradley’s. I hadn’t had anything since the latte at lunchtime and, though I didn’t feel like it, I knew that I needed to eat. I wandered around, failing to decide on anything, eventually picking up a Gubbeen salami, one of the finger-thin skinny ones, a box of penne and six tomatoes. I had onions and garlic at home and a few ends of Parmesan. I could make some kind of a sauce out of what I had. Whether I’d eat it or not, I’d decide later. I grabbed a bag of West Cork mixed winter leaves before I went up to pay. Not exactly salad weather, but I wasn’t up to preparing vegetables. I glanced down the back of the shop. Bradley’s has the best range of premium drinks and craft beers in the city. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to get drunk, to forget everything for a while. Mostly, I was glad I didn’t know what I was missing. Maybe, like my birth mother, if I started I wouldn’t stop.

Back home, I brought the groceries upstairs and left them on the kitchen worktop while I selected music to play. Though, feeling this lonely, it had to be wall-to-wall Gillian Welch. I’d start with Revival, its opening track ‘Orphan Girl’ never more apt, and work my way through. From the moment Dave Rawlings’s guitar started, I began to feel calmer. I took two onions and a head of garlic from the press and poured olive oil into a saucepan. And tried not to think about Davy and Deirdre and Jeremy Gill.

Hearing a ping, I grabbed my handbag from the sofa where I’d thrown it.

‘What exactly are you sorry for?’ Davy’s message said.

How about that I was sorry for using him? Sorry for being a bad friend? But I wasn’t going to say any of that by text.

‘We need to talk. If you’re still talking to me?’

Pause.

‘Might be.’

A sliver of light.

‘What you doing?’

‘Just out of meeting. Need food.’

Pause.

‘Come here. Just home. Making pasta.’

Pause.

Pause.

‘You sure?’

‘Sure,’ I typed, though I wasn’t.

‘We can talk and eat,’ I added, and pressed send.

Instant reply: ‘See you in 10.’