So as we send Barney packing, but I admit it, I’m nervous. These panic attacks, these flashbacks, they’re giving me a weird feeling that I just can’t shake, where it’s like the past and the future are all mixed up in each other’s together. A prophetic feeling, is what you call it. And the guy what looked like Tommy, and what went on between them, but maybe not. All of this has got me on edge, and I’m starting to feel like my head’s away with it.

Tommy’s gone for the weekend. He’s staying in some cottage in Cushendall that some pals of his own. I’m in the dump house with Kathy and the pillowcase is back on her head.

Look, I says to her, I’m taking the gag out if you can be fucking polite for ten fucking minute. I leans in and I take the gag out and she just sits there, in silence. It’s a fucking miracle. Are you still alive in there? I says to her. Barely, she says to me, thanks to you. Listen, love, I says to her, I’m the one keeping you alive. I’m the one feeding you every day, I’m the one taking you to the toilet. All of this is above and beyond, far as I’m concerned, I says.

I’m so fucking tired of it, she says to me, I’m so fucking tired of both sides. Her voice is muffled from the white pillowcase that is still on her head. There’s a wet patch where her lips have made a circle, so as she looks like a ghost. Youse bang on about civil rights but it’s all just a fucking excuse, she says to me, in this voice what’s hard to make out and what sounds like an echoes. No one has any rights anymore in Ireland, not unless you can establish them at the end of a gun, she says, in this distant voice. You’ll come running just as soon as you get burnt out your house, I says to her. As soon as your husband gets plugged in the back, who you gonna turn to then? The peelers? The fucking Brits?

You’re the one most likely to pop my husband in the back, you dirty fucker, she says to me, in this voice like one of them ventriloquists. Why don’t you just torch our house while you’re at it? she says. I can’t believe she called me a dirty fucker. That was below the belt. Still, I keep my cool. Women are different, you have to understand that.

So your man sells children’s comics for a living? I says to her. Comics aren’t just for children anymore, she says, and her weird quiet voice is really starting to do my crown in, to be honest with you. Fucking superheroes and that? I says to her. Give me a fucking break. Some guy running round in his fucking scants saving people? For the love of Jayzus, what next?